This is where you are.
There is no other place.
No other “You.”

Not the little boy so wanting
to be like his cousins—
red-cheeked, curly-haired girls,
all of you sitting in a circle in the sand,
your father in white t-shirt and khakis
towering benevolently above this
cousined assembly in the back
yard of aunt Jean’s house.

Not the expectant father/doting husband
standing at the window of UC Med Center
on Parnassus Street at 3am gazing
at the untrafficked street 14 stories below
listening to the in utero heartbeat of
the being already named Alex who will
make his dramatic entrance
five and a quarter hours later.

No—right now you are in your bedroom,
colorful scarves draped on the walls,
dresses in the closet seldom worn anymore
due to pandemic circumstances.

You are here—breathing, reclining on
your bed wondering if there is any way out
of this besides a decorous curtsey —
a bow to the muse of time and the
“ineluctable modality” of change.