"Down"

What ages us is not the choices
that we acted on, but all those choices
we rejected which we won't

let go of. Sitting here in the sun,
I feel those trips to England
and to Italy not taken forming folds

under my eyes and weighing
down my cheeks, those nights
in anger or indifference I turned

from you opened pulling on
my abdomen, poems I never
wrote swelling my knuckles

and wrinkling the flesh
on the backs of my hands,
weekends not spent

with parents stiffening
my knees, while unanswered
letters and abandonments

blur my vision and draw
my eyelids and the rest
of me down.