SOLITARY AT SIXTY-TWO

 

She wonders

where everyone has gone.

She was born a plankton

starving for sunlight

beneath dense overhead coverage.

 

She drifts with the ripples

that take her along

but counter currents warn

this is not the way

to reach the shore.

 

She tries to want

what she should: society, sobriety, sacrifice

but like the coral pink hula hoop

she hoisted and twirled

around her blubbery middle

she can’t keep any of it going.

 

Now lean from years of swimming

and a metabolism

for dark, deep-water truths,

she doesn’t fit well

into polite company.

 

Her chosen aloneness

can feel both like a curse

and living out a purpose

she cannot fathom.

It has her snagged

like a clump of seaweed

on rocks at low tide

drying hard and dull

in the sun where

she prays for a wave

to wash her backwards

to her beginnings

but having seen the horizon

like a scar between surface and sky

she is now afraid of drowning.