Member Poem

How often did I yearn
to put down the briefcase,
take off the tie, the suit,
to cast away the fetters
of commitments and be free?
I would become a Russian doll,
discard in turn each level
of this life, to reveal at last
the boy who was just sleeping
under those coverlets of years.

In time, the suit, the tie, the duties
fell away: not so the years.
Too late, I learned: they are not layers
to be put aside like winter clothing
but strata hardened into rock.
Not a carapace, but part of me.
The child inside departed long ago
and left behind a hollow casting
of himself: merely a box
of threadbare memory.

First published in the Poetry Kit online anthology, Poetry in the Plague Year