Passing Through

 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.

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