The first
last time I felt your hands
on mine was before the heat
broke and autumn exploded
in front of me.

Beneath
the warm glow
of our birthdays I gave you
a book—a warm touch,
our hands meeting briefly,
passing quickly through
a flame like children’s do
before the wick burns
through.

The frost
that came later that week
whispered to me
in my troubled sleep,
soft and extinguishing,
the candle’s gone out.

Is that how it is with birthdays?
Counting down the years between
then and now, birth and death, 
a footnote reminding me
that with each day I am
closer to dying
than the one before.
See how time is peeling off of me
the little girl I used to be?

Look me in the mirror,
look as I get older and I do
not continue to bloom.
Soon enough the process
will reverse itself and
I will collapse inwards,
the veins on my hands
popping out from where
my skin has sunken in.
Watch as time breeds inside of me
the old woman I’m soon to be.

Her fingers splay out like roots on the bright white sheets,
yanking at the
yellowing tubes that
bloom like broken flowers from her arms,
gently covering the parade of scars that
chop at her wrists.
In the corner, I wallow in my own unblemished skin,
wishing that I could
bear the blunt
of her axe, that
my own life
could be cut away
so that hers might
grow again.