Immortality

At the gym, they told me I would not die,

I would only get sexier, and I believed them.

I spent my nights wondering if this was going to turn

into something long-term, if this was what is meant by casual,

or if this was just my annual catastrophic disappointment

because if it wasn’t, then I would have to brace

myself. I took my medication and looked at pictures

of people who were not in love with me. I deleted

their names from my cache, said hello to my cat

over the phone, took more medication. Days

passed. I learned it’s hard to measure your own increasing

sexiness. I enlisted bystanders. I passed mirrors

and pretended they were not mirrors, but clean

windows, and I was not myself, I was

a clean stranger. Some days I was sure

she wanted to come home with me, and

I had to let her down easy, through the window,

like a priest. Once I’d been unleashed

from thoughts of my own death I was free

to be loved in the way I always knew I’d deserved:

reciprocally, in Fiji, our bodies lithe and bronzed

like gods, but at the same time I felt like a vampire,

and none of my friends could relate. They were jealous

of my book deal, my time spent at the ashram

while they were here, suffering another winter,

their unsexiness a flourescent sign that blinks all night.

Source: Dispatch from the Future (Melville House, 2012)