Let me outlive my grandmother

let me outlive my grandmother
let me reach that age when I understand
storytelling as it's spoken by the mouthful,
when the muscle memory
of food and sex
are no longer encouraging in their repetition,
still, let me reach my arm around you.

I will stretch into these orange mornings
long enough to see through my eyelids
and feel their warmth in my ripening organs.
I will live more than I have been asked.
I will live for the privilege
of recounting it all when I am old.

though it's not enough to see
to live and remember;
I will hand out all I hold sacred,
my idealized women who have flown
from all but my memory, I will tell
of all the lies I've told to my friends
and in poems,

do you remember the way we sat then?
so uncomfortable
at our desk, but we wouldn't admit it.
I want to give myself out.