Dotage
by Kathleen Balma
Lover, let’s age swap: you lunge backwards and slough off
a double decker of years. I’ll slide into a sadder sack of myself
in time-lapse photography and wait. It wouldn’t take
long for you not to show up. The reverse of us
doesn’t work. The plus and minus of perv: man’s perk. Can you then,
as you are now, touch the future me as I will want (reverb)
to be (re)touched? Pen stripling comfort to my sag and stitch,
some message in a rocket for a youer me to read?
I would like to benefit from that missive tout suite, but who am I
to peep on my elder ego? She might slap me, or worse:
pity. Or—twist in plot—she may surprise us both and not
want touch at all. She may be busy with more anile tastes,
quilting and such, collecting obliques. She may take up frottage
with a known cuckold. (Mattress ticking’s the rub: better plain,
unsoiled.) A more selfishly sufficient bag may never live,
unquaked by anything but the cackle arts.
Yet, she’ll be a product of caress. My someday
skin must bear that. So, on the svelte chance you might
want her, lover, I’d send you off to that there now
at my nower self’s expense.
Kathleen Balma is a Fulbright Fellow and Pushcart Prize-winning poet from the Ohio River Valley of Illinois. She began her Arts education at Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, then earned advanced degrees from Southern Illinois University and Indiana University. An aficionada of Romance languages, she was an international student in Andalusia and Tuscany during her college years. She has also lived for extended periods in New South Wales, Western Australia, New England, Madrid, and Louisiana.