Expiration Date

a taxi driver in

vienna

once told me,

"we all have an 

expiration date

stamped on us,"

as he drove me to the

hapsburg crypt.

a bit morbid, perhaps,

but fitting

in a city wrested

with the 

bones of empire.

i thought of him

again,

when the doctors 

pulled away my skin

and showed me my 

expiration date.

i drove home

laughing morbidly,

by body wrested

with the bones of

irony.