Jeremy Radin

Forty

So now I’m forty.
What I thought 
would be isn’t,
& more troubling, 
what I thought 
was wasn’t, not 
exactly, not always.
I’m the same 
amount lonely &
the same amount 
hopeful—but with 
an exciting new 
spiritual vocabulary.
I’m in the same 
body, different city.
Here the leaves 
are turning 
butteryellow—
I’m thinking of 
the ginkgo 
standing sentry
at the synagogue.
The gingko, the oldest 
extant tree species.
Its leaf like the fan 
of a courtesan.
Each year 
the synagogue leans 
down a little further
& whispers 
about what kind of life
I’m permitted. 
When will it be the one 
I asked for? 
Forty is a very 
Jewish number.
My desertyear. 
My honey. 
I’m in love & it isn’t 
going well.

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Jeremy Radin is a writer and actor. His poems have appeared in Poem-A-Day, The Colorado Review, The Sun, and some other places poems appear. His third collection, Belly-God, is forthcoming from Orison Books. He is a high school graduate with a D average and lives near a park. Follow him on Instagram @germyradin.