Discomforts

    Stepping onto stones on which I last walked at age 22
    shakes my belief that I have finally, at age 52,
    found a way to live fulfilled in my own skin.
    Memories of wishing to be someone else waft back.
    Feelings of failure, pressures to do better without really knowing
    how to do better lie latent inside me,
    like virile little cultures
    waiting for the tiniest of incentives to grow.
    My eyes blur more quickly now.
    My energy ebbs at a faster pace.
    Recovery still occurs, but as I step onto stones on which I walked at age 22,
    I remember all nighters, late nighters, running outdoors late at night in a t-shirt disguised as a dress
    wondering how I had the energy,
    how I had the guts to think that I could do it at all.
    On these stones, I remember disliking school,
    not loving books,
    just waiting to graduate.
    It seems perhaps that these stones carry some
    embodied wisdom. If I step on them again and ask them to share,
    will they divulge?