Superman Wannabe

Bath towel on my shoulders and clothespin at my throat

I eagerly transmogrified my scrawny blond physical self,

Intense with its abrupt infusion of heroic strengths -- of muscles and of purpose, too.

Batman and Robin, true, were dynamic,               

And with a shrug I would easily concede to don either of those personae:

A social courtesy among playmates. But that was a game.

When alone, when adrenaline fused with the blood in my veins to become metallic,

My truer, humorless self came to the fore.

I had no need for Bash! nor Pow! nor crime-fighting fraternité.

I leapt and longed for flight, for effortless deflection of bullets from a chest of steel,

For transparency, to me alone, of the seemingly opaque, and

Most vulnerably, most secretly of all, for Lois Lane.

My towel no longer works that way.

It swallows the skin of water a shower cultivates, it dampens as I rub it through wet hair,

It hastens to cover me as I run to the ringing phone in sad, weak parody of bolting to stop a bank heist.

I can reflect on my boyhood dreams and my manhood ones, too, and blush as I note the many ways

I have played the game of the wistful cape: in Asia, in urban schools, on the capitol steps—

Much more a Jimmy Olsen than the Superman routinely misidentified as bird, no! a plane!…

Today I sit and read without heroic inclinations, my veins tickled not by adrenaline but by caffeine from Chinese tea.

I glance up and make unexpected eye contact with the cat who has deigned, for one melodramatic moment, to stare at me.

What, I wonder, does her x-ray vision see?