The moment your wife
first notices the gray
hair winding from your chest
will not be breaking news.
Its coming will have been
foretold by nothing so brash
as a star rising in the east;
rather an inexplicable twinge
or colonoscopy or acute interest
in biographies of the dead.
Even so you will have long
ago negotiated an amicable if
not peaceful telomeric armistice.
Latecomer to the front — major
networks returned to regularly
scheduled programming, cables
wound, corpses buried and cold —
she gestures in earnest sympathy,
‘Here was strength. There was
joy.’
‘I will tell your story.’