Accounting for the Years

My city is dying around me.
Stores and restaurants disappear,
their windows empty or boarded up.
Last week our neighborhood deli,
which had just celebrated its 100th year,
closed.

I had my children at the same time
as the owner’s wife. Our OB/GYN is gone
now too. All of my doctors, in fact,
have died or retired. I have had three
GPs in the last six years. My dentist was
a devastating loss.

The worst part is the streets.
They are lined and wrinkled like my face,
seamed and criss-crossed, showing
years of exhaustion, bulging with
ridges like the cellulite that now defines
my waist.

 

 

Carol Garner is a born New Yorker, even though it took her twenty six years to get to the city. She is a student of film, a lover of the theatre, and a hapless addict to mystery novels. She has dabbled in poetry for as long as she can remember, although until recently she kept the results private. “Accounting for the Years” is her first publication.