Image credit: cunaplus
There is too much of me
These days I lumber,
old bones covered
in skin that is loose, it folds
across territories alien
My rib cage disappeared
so many years ago I can’t recall
Beneath the layers
hides the lithe form within
and is stricken with invisibility
The girl I was
is gone
Still she’s in my mind
The eye within sees form
and function gone so silently
I dream a dream of me
as I once was
as though in needing only may I be
and turning careful at my mirror I can see
any remaining angularity
I fool myself with kindness
others will not give, or see
But for those moments when
I stand with thinner friends
in stores where clothes
might call to such deluded whims
I dare not try them on
For in the mirror on the distant wall
is where the end of all such dreaming falls
I did not see it, did not turn away in time
I see myself unalloyed and unarranged
and recognise with fright
this person there is me
the weight of years so heavy
on this stranger’s frame
I am no longer young
The girl I was
is gone
© Helen Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved
helenvalentina 
Ah! Thats telling. The mirror is a fickle friend that seldom echoes what we know inside. Instead it pulls its tongue, and drops its jaw, and betrays that what we really are, is hidden from the world!
So true, thanks Philippa!! 🙂 🙂
Good morning Helen, I know how you feel. Its a burden as we age to see that stranger in the mirror and then become careful as to how much downward looking we do. For me its a daily struggle but one I’d like to think I might win?? Maybe!
Thanks Michael, yes, a daily struggle! Age has its benefits I find, but also its challenges! 🙂 🙂
But so much smarter
Thanks John, one hopes so!! 🙂 🙂
At 85 I weigh the same as I did at 18, and my weight has hardly ever changed. I have never dieted or overeaten. It’s nothing for which I can claim any credit. Not to have ever had to worry about my weight has been a matter of sheer luck, maybe in my genetic makeup.
Thanks Malcolm – you are lucky then. I’ve always been relatively slim, though not thin, until I hit this middle aged period. But that’s life I suppose! 🙂 🙂
“The girl I was is gone”, not really, a change in shape does not change the core of your being. Life does that instead.. 😀
Thanks! 🙂 Very true, but I was just feeling the physical changes more the day I wrote this poem! 🙂 🙂
I feel those every morning when I get up 😀
I resemble this poem.😄
Me too! 🙂 Thanks for commenting! 🙂
Sam and I made a deal that we wouldn’t buy sweets (we can make them from scratch though). Well he has made 3 different types of cookies this week! Cookies are my downfall. Seeing your body change is terrifying. My body has been through many changes. I developed fast I was a heavy child, an underweight teen, a pudgy then healthy/slim young woman, a pregnant woman (really scary) a chubby/underweight/and healthy woman. I am very even in my proportions which is nice but I gain weight easily and because of thyroid issues I lose very very slowly and not without great effort. I also don’t develop muscle tone well. It’s tough and the older I get the tougher.
Yes, age makes all the struggles more, doesn’t it? I have fluctuated most of my life, but more from lack of discipline at times. When I ate healthily, up until middle age, I pretty much stayed slim, but now hormones and age have made losing any weight hard, and I find for the first time in my life the weight gathers on my stomach rather than my thighs…go figure! 🙂 🙂
It does! Weight distribution changes with age because of hormonal changes. At the moment the weight still goes to my thighs but since I had a child I get more in my lower abdomen (much harder to keep that area the way I want and at the moment it isn’t lol). I look at my mother and grandmother to gauge my future. My grandmother had a pronounced pear shape and stayed pear shaped but I am more hourglass so that might turn into an apple later I don’t know yet lol I will see my mom this summer so I will if she still has her weight in her legs