Mid-life Crisis
It's like a puddle that never
quite became a lake,
cancer hiding in the
shallow end
of your gene pool,
weeks spent in
an incubator.
It's like a solid left backhand
from your mother;
who mistook your
polite inquiry for a
condiment as a snide
remark to your father.
It's like being apparent
when you'd rather be
invisible and
being translucent
when you'd rather be
opaque.
It's nowhere close
to your first
autoerotic experience,
rather, akin to the time
your mother walked in,
mid-climax;
sheened with cold
sweat under
dirty sheets.
It's like quitting college
to care for an alcoholic.
It's like gaining too few lovers
and loving few too many.
It smells as a bloody nose
tastes as a split lip
looks as a black eye
sounds as a crying face
buried in a pillow
and
feels as a broken arm
left unattended
for a week’s time.
This is similar to
being kicked down
a flight of stairs
or waking up
in a piss soaked bed
at thirteen.
It's analogous to being
over-nourished but
under-nurtured.
It's about as close as you can get to
putting the gun in your mouth,
against your temple,
and lacking the strength
to pull the trigger.
It's like dead roses
on a spring day
Tantamount to a
funeral procession
Getting up at four
p.m. on a Saturday
and going to work,
realizing,
you're over half
the age of
your father,
when he died.
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