I'm going to say something controversial. Lots of people will probably gasp in shock and take an affronted step back, or call me a radical and a crazy person. But this is how I feel, and I just want to get it out there:

I don't want to look younger.

I am almost 30. I am nearing the age of no-longer-a-fresh-faced-20-something. And I like it.

One of these days I am going to get grey hair. I look forward to this, and while it may impact my income to the point doing so becomes necessary, I would prefer not to dye it.

I don't want to hide my fine lines and wrinkles. I'm okay with getting age spots, so long as I'm taking care of my health--to me sunscreen isn't an avoidance of wrinkles so much as an avoidance of cancer. And yes, I probably will wear makeup on occasion--because it's fun to do so.

Age is beautiful. Truly, awesomely beautiful.

And Americans fear it.

If it seems American women fear it more than men, well, maybe they do and maybe they don't--but they'd have a right to do so, as ingrained prejudices make it harder for older women to support themselves financially, to find role models in fiction (our cultural narrative) that aren't evil or crazy, to be considered savvy and beautiful and valuable in a society that often seems to value women for beauty more than any other form of competence.

But when people get older, they generally become more confident, more capable of seeing the bigger pictures, more willing to laugh. They're funny, they're often wise, they're usually more emotionally resilient.

Yes, there are the negative stereotypes, as well: the fear of the body's slow decline, the greater fear of the loss of ability to learn. The danger of becoming stuck in a certain way with the assumption it's the only right way. But I know more people who avoid these stereotypes than fall for them, and I wonder if we pushed ourselves as a culture to make age about learning and accepting, if we couldn't even reverse the stereotypes completely. Because I know plenty of older people who are open-minded, tech-savvy, and if not cutting-edge, then at least willing to learn.

Which is as much as can be said for any other age range of people.

If we tell people that with age comes the ability to love more, and that growing old is accompanied by the responsibility of accepting that others who are different are not innately wrong--would that make it so? I don't know, but I hope so.

When I say I don't want to look younger, when I reject the fear of age and instead welcome it, it's because I see in it a stronger, more powerful beauty than youth. Because unlike youth, age doesn't fade. It only enhances. Because the stereotypes we give it are flimsy and avoidable, while naivete and inexperience are both the hazards of and part of the definition of youth.

I want to celebrate surviving this world as long as I have. I want to celebrate my experience, and all the things I've learned. I want to celebrate age, not hide it. I find it beautiful and rich and brilliant, a trophy of passing time and a marker of things learned, mistakes made, people known and loved. No, I don't want to hide my age.

In short, I don't want to look younger.

Easily avoided

Fog encapsulates a dewy grassy field
and I wander sluggish through the mist
Droplets sitting on grass, pearly white
against misty green, wetting my hems.
Some lady with a gun shows up, yells,
aims for my head but the smell of her
tasty brain has given me warning, so
I move, and take just a nibble, just a tiny
nibble
and then I have a friend wandering the
misty field by my side, and if only we'd
made a little more tea this morning, all
this could have been avoided.

Make more tea, people.

I like camping, anyway.

I'm sitting by the fire alone
its heat soaking into my skin and
almost painful against the cold
of the room--the heater's broken.
You come back and, grimly,
shake your head, putting down
the flashlight to scoop up a
protesting cat, whom you hold
and nuzzle as you sit beside me.

I scritch her chin and she extends it
but mewls angrily, except she purrs
as she glares up at us, and when we
let her go she runs across the room
but grabs her toy and runs right back
dropping it dingling at our feet.

I throw it for her and she bolts away,
and leaning into you I say, "We'll
be okay tonight. They'll curl up with
us, under the blankets, for warmth."
You nod, and sure enough the cats
array themselves around us in front
of the fire. By the time the repairman
shows up the next day, we've made
hot chocolate twice and you've got your
super-duper spicy chili on the stove.

Obviously the milk is fine, so I have
a full bowl, and survive, grateful for
a broken heater.

Frost dreams

Watching the sun rise
while standing in a forest
catching the glimpses of sky
between trees and pine needles
made easier because of winter
You ask why I love summer
so much when it is winter
that gives us glimpses of
the sun I idolize.
Holding your hand I
take you to stand out in
a field sixty meters wide
and point to brown ground
with its twisted grass corpses
and say, "In summer these
are flowers, weeds, seeds;
not just grass but also
life reborn, a field
of sunshine wherein
we, too, begin growing."
But you laugh and dig up
a piece of dirt to show me
a seed, and say, "Too late, see?
We are even now planted, waiting,
Though we don't grow much, we
spread our roots while sleeping,
and though springs warms our
roots, it's winter that settles
us, that makes us dream of
summer in the first place."

We watch the sun rise
through slips of trees and pine
and I hold your hand, wishing
the spring's warmth would return,
but last summer, I really wanted
just a simple taste of frost.

If there is a failing, it is not in the figment, who is what it is.

Should I be
not a dream, a figment?
You chase me, little cat,
and I am but a speck floating
that no one else can see.

Will catching me bring you joy?
But how your face falls when
I am truly in your paws,
how quickly boredom unsettles
the unfathomable joy you had
when I was beyond your reach.

Was I more to you
than a speck, than a figment?
Did you think I would finish you,
that I was the last drop of paint
the painter forgot in painting you?
Or that I was an everlasting rat,
sure to please your never-ending hunger?

Should I be not a dream, or a figment?
Should I dare to be just a speck,
when you think to dream more of me?
I can give only what I am, little cat,
and that is but a moment of passing
interesting in a wall that
humans cannot fathom.

Lay your dreams, my hatchlings

Do not throw away your hopes and dreams--
they guide you away from the sea.

As children we trundle on the sand towards the moon
and lay our dreams in clutches, daring to hope
that some will survive to adulthood.
Few do.

But twenty-some years pass, and then
crawling, lumbering, we return, the nests
now empty, yet
somehow, one, two, four of those dreams
find us, join us, lead our way
back to the sea.

Do not throw away your hopes and dreams--
they guide you back to the sea, and become
the water in which you swim,
so that no matter how lost you become
you may always make your way.

Silence in the Office

I smell rose petals in the air
when I walk into the dull, dark office;
silence fills the halls, but I smell
hot coffee, rich and thick, percolating.
The cologne of the neighboring cube
overpowers the sound of his typing
until I hear nothing; the lightly burnt air
scent of the heater running fills a
hum-less room.

I sit, and work, in the silence,
bright colors jumping past my eyes.
Reds, greens, purples of ink
bleeding papers into Standard English,
while pastel blues and eggshell whites
backlight purple mardi gras beads
and turquoise posters of ocean scenes.

I sit, and work, in the silence
and wonder where everyone has gone,
in an office full of scent and color,
the dystopian quiet plays an anthem
to the tune of rising zombies.