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Those were the days, my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance
Forever and a day
-Gene Raskin

To Julie

Those were the days
by Sharon Ruetenik

We were everybody’s favorite song.
They applauded our fat free bodies jammed
into designer jeans, unstructured linen
jackets, Italian leather boots. They riffed
off our antique pendants and earrings.
They mimed our talk talk talk in gelatti
cafes and fern bars.

But even after glasses of Sombuco
or Amaretto spun round our table,
our sex lives and bank accounts splayed
across its cloth, no one dared consider
our mortality, wonder which would die first.

And now years from knowing
what our others read or wear
to brunch, that midnight call comes.

Enough years have gone by for sons
and daughters to graduate college, our clothes
decreed vintage. But surely not enough
years for one of us to be arranged,
as the mannequins we once admired,
before French doors, placid lawn
restive ocean, seeing nothing, watched
by a husband who waits for that final sign;
she’s ready to leave songs and friends,
done with days.