Because our planet’s so far from its star,
birthdays come rarely and my species
finds other ways to mark our passage—
most associated with the body’s various
sproutings, the blemishes and growths
that indicate time getting on. For my
First Forehead Crease I was given
a rocketship model kit, and promptly told
not to look so concerned about how many
pieces it contained. Soon I set up a table
in the basement—an unhinged door
laid horizontal on two sawhorses—
and started to pluck pieces one by one
from their plastic trees. By the time I was
ready to paint it silver, other passages
had come and gone: Pitch Deepenings,
Wax Cleanings, assorted Bone Nubs
and their Removal From My Face. It was
a wholly different me, nearly, hunching
in that basement, applying a silver patina
to a model of what even then looked like
my future. I spray-painted in a gentle
back-and-forth motion, from a foot away
created a chrome cloud, and saw
as I advanced up the body, how the model
in that faded space turned to glistening.
Just like now, I think, landed, polishing
the three fins on which this ship sits,
running a rag over its arched doorway,
balancing a rickety ladder against
its curved chrome skin and waxing
the nose cone till it shines like an obelisk.
And celebrating, too, if more quietly,
rites of diminishment: Hurt Back Day,
Unwanted Hair Day (a week-long event
since so many sites are involved), and
Name Forgetting Day, slightly delayed
in companionless space. Party hat on,
mulling in my Captain’s Chair—new stars,
new starts rushing toward me, Stained
Teeth Day, too, quickly approaching—
I become pensive, like a human standing
with arms out, palms up, making his body
a scale for opposing points of view—
on the one hand, a rustless realization;
on the other, corporeal dust.
