every freakin’ day people point at me to remind me i’m really old, so old my age is now a game of wild guesses two hundred, five hundred there’s always a kid who barks one million but the kicker is this one tour guide who reveals i’m one-fifty with such confidence it rattles the oldest leaf off my two-hundred-year-old branch and when it lands on his head, he just thinks the universe is telling him he’s right
i’m so old but they refuse to let me die they strap me into steel braces like a patient who never asked for surgery as if some tragedy would befall this land if i go. and the root of all this fuss? they stuck my face on five dollars once and now i’m too expensive to die
all because some artist saw lottery numbers in my bark, placed a five-dollar bet and won first prize. he got a car. i’m still here
i had friends once, before they dotted us across the island. i hope they were lucky enough to just fall two hundred years watching swan lake and nothing’s changed same fights, same tears, same joggers outrunning nothing kids used to climb me, couples leaned into my trunk like i was theirs now i’m on crutches and nobody touches what might break.
the age game though. i’d be lying if i said i don’t listen.