Somedays, When I Wonder About Age

I like to run for so long that I feel my lungs rejecting the oxygen in the

atmosphere. I imagine this to feel like growing old. To go & go & go until

there is no more road to tread. Your feet have grown numb, but there is something inside

of you forcing you to keep going, & your body/mind/soul wants to run until

life oozes out of your ribcage.

Somedays, I wonder about age and what it must look like to grow with someone—

intertwined. To wrap bones with roots planted firmly in soil, sprinkling years like rainfall

on branches. How it feels to grow old & take up space, to decorate life’s cages with portraits

& postcards, to display laughter by hanging it through the holes in chain link fences.

One day, I watched an older husband and wife at a nature preserve for what seemed

like hours. They sat as close as they could, humidity creating a gap between the insides

of their thighs, white hair sticking to foreheads like wet paint on concrete.

The woman would still every so often to show the man her favorite animals. She would smile

& say, I want us to be as happy as these birds one day. They laughed at a family of otters, comparing

the slick stomachs to their own legs and arms, pointing at an albino peacock then at themselves,

ruffing each other's hair.

I pray one day I am able to find myself in otters and peacocks, that I’m able to trace

wrinkles on my arm and to mistake them for braille. To write stories of love & youth

& growth in the creases of my smile lines. I pray that one day, I will be able to put my ears

to the cool dirt of the Earth and hear it calling me back home. That I will allow the ground

to carry me back. I pray that one day, I will finally understand what it means to bury mistakes

in the ground and to watch them grow with the spring.

I pray one day that I will allow my skin to be hot & humid, but remain still & safe.

To find coolness in conversations and hearty giggles. To allow hair to swell up and outwards,

cheeks flushed with the pinks and reds of sky. Somedays I wonder if this can only happen with age.

The ability to be comfortable in the elastic that wraps your bones. To put down your weapon of a body

and to cradle its lasting remains.

Karmiah Smith ‘26

This piece was inspired by an older couple I saw at a nature preserve over the summer. Through the poem, I was able to process what aging means to me, and I tried to convey how it doesn't have to be an inherently good or bad thing. I think aging doesn't have to be ‘a means to an end,’ but that it can, instead, be looked at as another stepping stone in life.