There is a pencil-drawn
daisy blossom
at the side of this page
a lovely female
eye with carefully
rounded shading
a bizarre Byzantine
curly-cue inhabits
two corners as if
this whole page
is a photo removed
or about to be lost
from an album

sepia ghosts
wanting to stay
on a phantom
cracked glossy sheet
that never can be

Today I turned
twenty-one in celsius
(sort of)
if you want to do the math
it means I am older than
those who are supposed
to know better

That makes me a lot older
than I could ever have imagined
when I was seven

When I was seven
years old I was
too young to have a celsius age
because 7 Fahrenheit is
minus 13 and change celsius.

All of which proves that life
begins at thirty-two.

And that makes
more sense
than most of this.

If you don’t mind
some slight of hand
with these numbers
what it all means is

since I am twenty-one
I have a lot
to look forward to.