and watching the Indian Wells tennis tournament
from a fancy country club in Delray Beach, Florida.
Out the window to my right
old people confuse golf with personality,
littering the driving range
with shanks and shortcomings.
Sabalenka is beating
the beautiful Jaqueline Cristian,
and no one here looks like me
with tattoos and club soda regret.
My daughter's theater company
is performing for these boomers in an hour,
so I am posted up in a post-Reagan world,
finding mistakes in something I made.
I’ve come a long way
since the white ghetto, since NYC,
and I feel like the luckiest
despite the dirty looks
I go to the lunch buffet
and steal a bunch of starches,
a couple Kind bars for the road
and get side glances from granddaughters.
And then I remember I have cancer,
and no one here can see it,
and nothing out there changes,
but my flowering evolution is what continues.