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‘Birthday’ by Ellen Steinbaum

Birthday

by Ellen Steinbaum

And so I move another year away.

I have a new haircut now,

but you would recognize me still:

I look exactly

as if I were the same.

You will not grow old

or stooped or slowed.

Caught in crystal time

you wait

while I wear out,

while my body

imperceptibly accumulates

the weight of passing days

that we will spend apart.

I will be older than you

will ever be.

I will pass your age

become so old

that I am new,

and change a minute at a time

until nothing is left

of who you knew,

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until the space between us lengthens

so that one day if you saw me

(if such a thing were possible)

you would mistake me

for a smiling distant relative,

an elderly aunt from crumbling photo albums.

You might sense a vague remembrance

and wonder if we’d ever met.