As quiet as the dancer lost in her own grace,
I was being replaced that afternoon.
I could feel it coming on like some seasonal flu,
or attack of the locusts

A new mindset or way of relation was
swarming around me and ready to land
into the day's equation.
I was being replaced

by another step in the ladder,
another shed of what didn't matter,
in favor of bigger fish to fry.
I was being replaced

by the thought of my 80-year-old self,
crinkled and ragged under the canopy of my past
wishing I had better surfed the terrain of emotion,
like the ballerina who can pirouette in silence,

making grand movements without a single ripple,
daring to be small within the large halls of my own world  
was something I was inching toward as I
looked at myself swarming into myself,

and crossing the rubicon of what I was yet to become.
It looked small where I was meant to go
and I was okay with that since these halls were
becoming too large for my next dance anyways.