We used to tell each other erotic stories
at slumber parties when I was about ten:
We’d meet and kiss dark, handsome boys,
and then sink into sixty-year dreams
from which we’d wake up for church weddings
and to name our butterscotch babies.
From there we always jumped ahead
to the pooping-out party, and died laughing
into our silencing pillows at the way
we ‘d overdose on laxatives, and be dead.
We never dreamed of the face-making
self-reconstruction from scratch
we’d be engaged in for most of our lives,
of at thirty-four an ordinary day
on which an aspiration is adj
