I carried myself all through life
never missing a moment, though it's often hard
to tell.
I see you tonight and cannot believe
how old you look.
It's been four decades since high school
and is it such a good idea for me
to overwrite my memory of you, what you were
at seventeen, your whole life ahead of you
unmarked, unwise, awkward and sweet as any child
with this new image, gray and battered,
lined and limping,
crooked?
(not to mention
drunk)