Today's poem is by Robert Okaji

Until
       

This face looking back at me never lies.
I feel as if I've cheated, drawn the winning
ticket, passed the exam without suffering
through classes and boring soliloquies.
Then I see the sagging jowls, the dark
circles, those lines—so many of them—
marking time and various scars
invisible to the unaided eye. When death
failed to claim me, I inhaled the ecstatic
fumes of second chances, faked my way
through another sixteen months of drudgery
before pulling the plug. Now, seven years
later, a thousand miles to the north, I study
you lying behind me in bed, unaware
of my gaze, of the power you possess
even asleep, and I wonder how to retain
this minute, these days and all that will unwind
so slowly, so quickly, inevitably, until.

Tweet
Copyright © 2024 Robert Okaji All rights reserved
from Shō Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission