Forty-Two and Under

Everyone tells me I’m forty-two.
The calendar confirms this.
The mirrors all agree.

But there was that moment the other night
when you parted your lips to laugh
and brushed my knee with a carefree hand.
There must have been some magic in that.

The china and linen on which we dined
turned plastic trays on plastic sheets
and there we were, in a grade school cafeteria,
you, the new girl, and me, the class clown,
doing what I could to make the young girls laugh
because I’ve always loved the sound.

Later, on the drive home,
you leaned across the console
and whispered a secret incantation
that changed the dangled keys
into my father’s and sent my eyes scanning
for a place to tuck my borrowed wheels,
to make you laugh some more,
and turn the volume down
on all your mother’s warnings.

Tagged as: Poems