I spent three months pulling red hairs from my teeth,
eight lodged in ***** hair,
two sipping bottom shelf wine,
and now learning how to drive
past cream-colored envelopes,
filled with future foe.

Sorrow takes getting used to --
happiness wanes over paranoid shoulder --
I mark calendars,
I stock coffee filters,
but the ends and beginnings
blur in boredom.

I spent a century waging a war,
four more making amends,
and now the record skips.

Memory bends,
bedrooms and bathrooms
smell the same--
funeral parlor
and pulpit martyrs
sound the same--
centuries and months
age the same.