My friend and I are drinking lattes and trying on
our deaths. If the cancer comes back,
he says he’s ready. Far worse, he says, to lose
his one remaining testicle and stick around waiting
for the new normal and the new normal after that.

I ask if it’s normal for two guys in their fifties
to prepare to shed their skins. He shrugs.
When the last ship leaves for Mars, I tell him,
I’ll be waving goodbye from among the downed wrecks
of beetle-felled sequoias next to the Come Back Later sign
in the Visitor Center parking lot. And he says he’ll be
right there with me. We agree that our daughters
will have to save the world now and, like Moses,
we just want a glimpse of the promised land
before we take off our jogging shoes and lie down for good.
Just think, he says, men our age shed
600,000 particles of skin per hour. I imagine us
walking together through the time that’s left,
dunes appearing in our wake.

The view from our regular table is not beautiful —
the red brick liquor store across the street,
the bony trees in their grated squares pointing
at nothing in particular.
Still, I like this time of day when the breeze lisps
through the last remaining leaves of stunted
patio sycamores, bringing the smell
of sweet and sour from the noodle joint next door.

He knows from my nails
my daughter’s not eating again. I know
by the loose skin beneath his eyes
he’s sleeping, or trying to, in the guest bedroom.
Just think, he says, when
a common house finch trills the temporary silence
like a skipped stone. Just think,
the exact same song for 150 million years,
passed down from one throat to the next.

Then I know the shadow’s back in the scan
and he’s preparing me gently. No more
“just thinks,” I say, as the finch goes for broke
and we sit and will the moment to expand
and expand like a circle drawn on water
after the stone’s skipped on.