Older

Cheeks are sinking in
Imperfect skin around eyes
A frozen frown here.

two chiseled lines inbetween my eyebrows
three long lines zigzagging across my forehead
every year more expensive make-up
every year the youthful glow fades from my face
every year I look more beautiful



Do you remember college parties?
Do you remember my fat cheeks and tight skin?

I always wore some stupid outfit- never quite in sync, yet never quite making my own fashion statement. Just lost in my wardrobe.

We would drink and drink. Now, if I drank that much, I would end up in the E.R.
Relationships were always painful and pointless, but so simple and uncomplicated.
Hangovers couldn't get us fired back then.
Remember random hook-ups? Drunk on the carpet? Alcohol is not performance enhancing.

I remember waking up with two other girls asleep in my double bed, Becky's make-up smeared all over my pillow. I still sleep in the same bed; now I wake up with the cat curled up at my feet, and the alarm reminding me that only God and orthodox Jews get a Sabbath.

I remember junky apartments and wrecked carpets, cheap beer and lost nights of glorious abomination.
I remember Luke Skywalker puking on my kitchen table one Halloween.

Where did that silly girl go- with the damaged red hair, dark roots fading into gnarled locks of fake strawberry blonde? Dancing on a chair with her arms over her head laughing in her boots and bare legs with that jean skirt I've long since shrunk out of when the baby fat fell off and she sallowed into me.

Sometimes I miss her a little. Her goofy drunken escapades- smile so wide her mouth threatened to turn inside out. And that stupid picture with two cigs in her mouth, sunken eyes displaying days of binge drinking when the first boyfriend who stuck around for more than 6 weeks stopped sticking around.

But I love the new wrinkles inbetween my eyebrows. I love the hollow place where the baby fat used to sit on my cheeks. I love being older. I love wanting for things that require the maturity and perseverance of age. I love working, and the solace of my space, my things, my clean linoleum floor, and working professional's apartment with the family below me.

I love the deep, meaningful pain of real loss and the complicated mess of relationships when the word "marriage" can hold real promise, and real terror.

Still, sometimes when I'm heading home at midnight on a Saturday, I think about Sunday mornings drinking a gallon of kool-aid, reading Faulkner in my bathrobe, waiting for the hangover to dissipate in that drafty old house with no insulation.

We were all living in dumpy shitholes drinking shitty beer eating shitty food and having shitty sex.

And now we're older.