—on my 79th birthday

Nobody in the widow’s household

ever celebrated anniversaries.

In the secrecy of my room

I would not admit I cared

that my friends were given parties.

Before I left town for school

my birthday went up in smoke

in a fire at City Hall that gutted

the Department of Vital Statistics.

If it weren’t for a census report

of a five-year-old White Male

sharing my mother’s address

at the Green Street tenement in Worcester

I’d have no documentary proof

that I exist. You are the first,

my dear, to bully me

into these festive occasions.

Sometimes, you say, I wear

an abstracted look that drives you

up the wall, as though it signified

distress or disaffection.

Don’t take it so to heart.

Maybe I enjoy not-being as much

as being who I am. Maybe

it’s time for me to practice

growing old. The way I look

at it, I’m passing through a phase:

gradually I’m changing to a word.

Whatever you choose to claim

of me is always yours;

nothing is truly mine

except my name. I only

borrowed this dust.