When I was younger, my dad would point at his belly and say
“This is your future, just wait.”
And I’d say no, I’m not like you,
not in that regard—
and I’d remember his malaise, his sorrows,
the thick, cracking skin on his heels and dark veins on his feet,
and his apparent resignation—
and I’d think not me, not ever.

Because I was young.

Now I find myself beginning to become malaised, to feel resigned,
and the veins in my feet and calves are thicker and darker than his were,
through no fault of my own, or so I’m told—
and though I have no gut I’ve also done less than he’d done at my age;
finished law school, gotten a job, married with a nine year old son.

I think back, always feeling older,
when I must have shone my golden gift;
my youth.

I think of all the strict convictions that I’d had,
the feeling that my life was tightly under my control
and that I alone would be the one to figure it out—
being human.

I think of when I thought I’d figured hair loss out
because I’d stopped drinking coffee.
When I turned it down at a friend’s house she implored me.
“But I like hyper Joe.”
I think that she just liked me.
My youth was out.

I remember slacklining in the park,
training circus arts, overcoming fear of heights
and mastering my balance and my mind.
I was sure that this’d be the thing that kept me young.
It must have been that day or later on that week I fell
and slammed my palm down onto a bee feeding on the daisies.
My first sting.
And later, when I fell off the line and it slapped hard against my leg,
a vein broke in my left calf.
My first varicosity.
I thought ahead.

I remember trying a hard climb at the gym.
Another friend said I looked young and jacked;
with college ending, would surely achieve my dreams.
My potential was showing.

I remember in the years shortly after how I adhered to my own burgeoning manhood,
had torqued down on my ideals,
and how this exploration made a lasting impact on those around me,
had drawn them in to me in ways I couldn’t really comprehend.
How those highlight moments are even more valuable than you could imagine, at the time—
it comes to light while reminiscing later, always later.

I never knew that I was shining then.
I’d only ever known the pain and challenge of chasing something down
I wasn’t sure was real.
I thought that I was old in all those moments,
those peaks that populate the endless graph.
And it was true: I’d never been older.
Just the same as now.

Do I still have my golden gift within?
We must conclude, horrifically conclude,
that it will never leave.
That I’m the youngest I will ever be,
right now.
That the light of change radiates out at will,
and that there will never be a better time to turn it on
than now, right now;

sitting, doing nothing in your room,
feeling tired and useless,
full of doubt and melancholy,

caught in endless nexus,
riding constant tides of past and future.