Decades

I'm curled on my chair, or was a few minutes ago, listening to Joss Stone. Joss, Katie Melua, KT Tunstall, I listen to a lot of kids I'm old enough to be the mother of. They sing about the way their bodies sing, like roaring crystal springs, while I feel like a stagnant pond today. Unintelligently designed to make babies then croak when I'm done, not to do what I'll be doing, thanks to science, stroll through decades with equipment that doesn't know what to do with itself anymore so it needs pinches and scrapes from unnatural objects that make it recoil and that silence its quieter song for awhile. They leave me curled in a chair for the day listening to Joss Stone sing about things old women like me also get to have, those extra decades, entitled to them or not, natural or not, the walks and the crystal air and nights curled with my head on my arm while my body sings more softly now, but still sings.