I rub my callused hands across my lips; crossed and sectioned by lines, desert earth; a dried riverbed my topography.
Each morning spider webs crawl from the corners of my eyes. The dusty gym mirror sees my hairline climb back, lifeless hairs on the porcelain sink-rim.
It is this folding and cracking I most fear, my smile a map of years; water cannot replenish my soil.
I rise from an arroyo of metal wreckage, the green lap pool and the grinding of bones: yellow pain butterflies before my eyes.
The stretch to a streamline can never be tight enough now, bone against bone. Softness in the shoulder joints worn; the years of motion erode.
And pressing the lifeless weights, the forty-five pound plates become wheels in a childhood train yard. The hardness grows on my hands.
Steven Brodsky completed his MA at the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and his MFA from Eastern Washington University. He is a professor of English at Suffolk County Community College. His work has appeared in various publications, including New Works Review, The Drunken Boat, Between the Lines, The Nor'easter, Antipodes, Gumball Poetry, Wordgun, The Island Ear, and Bellingham Review.
