from Jen Blair: "Reductions"

I said mom if you can’t feel your feet, you can’t drive. Age is selling the car, curfew, confinement, counting out pills, the friends you lost, the places you no longer go, foods you no longer eat, holding memories to the tongue, the face you no longer have, esophageal separations, entrusting oneself to machines, careful bathing, a plan to dress, a plan for rising from the chair, holding oneself in the day, absolute escort, extremities excised, easily ignored, exhausted by the prospect of asking. How the vision divides, recedes, the eye shedding itself from itself, the voracious act of looking, where did that go, what was I doing, losing light, losing appetites, pleasures muted, trying to come, trying to be the moment, peel a future like ripe fruit.