![woman in white leotard mid-air beneath autumn tree](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/darius-bashar-WSYpuOuPoF4-unsplash-683x1024.jpg)
How do you bear the middle-aged body, all its longing—
…… a body grown round. It doesn’t curve
with the same sweetness it did
on days when they snapped your bra in the hallway
or nights when they whispered, You’re perfect,
though you never believed it.
The body gives up its wounds too,
all the times you said no without words.
It’s yours now.
You stretch out your arms, turn in scarlet-yellow leaves
your heart still hungry in its cage.
—In the lowering autumn dark
you are here, astonishingly, here.
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