When I am Old

When I am old I will be my own person,

Not a mural with tiles from others I liked,

tossed lopsided where I thought they would fit.

Husky eyes of heterochroma staring coldly.

My fingers will belong to me,

each wrinkle the result of fists balled with wailing white knuckles,

Palms smoothed on cheeks caressed,

Cheeks I am yet to know the shade of.

And my face will be my own.

I will no longer be surprised by my reflection morning by morning.

My face will be stained by confused reflux, deltas and riverbeds make a map,

I will have torn down the dams that block my humanity from flowing.

And I will learn what it means to be alone,

Alone as an ant in an ocean and what it means to be complete;

Complete only as a mural, tiles still, seemingly out of place, maybe keeping some tiles from others,

Acne and sunspots never bothered me anyway.

I will let violence leave not as misplaced bile and white heat, but as words,

Spoken into microphones or whispered into just one pair of ears.

I will fly a kite, like I could never figure out how to as a boy,

And I will fly a plane, like what I would have imagined the kite being as a boy.

I will love only like a man does, and I will hate only as a boy does.

Beyond knowledge or reflection.

For now, I only know the two words are opposites of each other,

Or at least, thats what dictionaries tell me.

I will be naked in  shame, but only because I will learn to value what I cover up.

Viel lifts from an egotistical indifference, but hopefully its eyes will be open.

I want to breathe with all essence,

Breathe the breath that stretches my ribs out the cage doctors call my chest,

And finally bend the pipe critics call a spine.

I hope I keep the friends who know all and more I know about myself,

Know my parents by their middle names,

Make all the pampers on all the pets I have matter because they savor the moments more,

And I am unsure if I would like to die before my brother and my wife.

All I can hope for is that I make the tiles by hand, picking which ones I want to include

With a pretentious pickiness I lack today.