Life Starts at Forty

From six to nineteen I was a race horse,
winning one competition after another.
In my twenties I caught up on
what teenagers in a freer country already did.
In my thirties I kept running.

When I turned forty
I looked back
and my thirties were already gone.

A decade that flew by
without asking me where it was going.
Every choice I made
was made by the room I was standing in,
the people around me,
the current I happened to be in.
I called it living.
It was mostly being carried.

Then the running broke.
In my late thirties, a manic episode
nearly wrecked my work
and my life along with it.
I celebrated my fortieth in shame.

It has been four years since.

Four years of shedding arrogance,
day after day,
like old skin,
and finding each morning
there is more of it left.
I thought I would have run out by now.
I haven't.
I'm starting to think that's the point.

And in the space it leaves behind,
something else moved in.

I have loved
without trying to win.
I have been loved back,
not in return, not as payment,
just back.

I have felt what a child feels
the first time they find a playmate
and fall in love with them,
the whole world narrowing
to you, come here, let's play.

I found my soulmate disguised as a playmate.

I don't know what the thirties were for.
Maybe for this:
to arrive at forty
empty-handed enough
to finally hold something.

Life starts at forty.
Mine did.

behdad
Edmonton, September 23, 2026
[CC BY]