The noun one keeps batting away refuses declension. He says, I don’t want to be twenty-four again. Twenty-four was a handful: the flawless meatflesh, best self, miraculous leap/thump on the hardwood, the twist and splash. The exuberance in the present tense, the timebound blood pump two throbbing lungs butt in their bone cage surges to bursting. He does not perdure in this internal defection: so rare, and so heroic.
Copyright © 2011 by Janet Holmes. Used with permission of the author.