Third Decade

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My friend came from the doctor
looking like a crazy person,
like a heeled tease at her first party.

Doctor says she’ll be in a chair by thirty
and should lay off the cigarettes
the drinking the rough sex all the honey
parts of the hive, if she wants to retire.

The third decade –
the ten good years when American girls
showed their legs for the first time
to boys with the stolen booze to use them –
the third decade, in her century shrunk by a third
and growing dark with the jackets of greasers,
the third decade the kicker:
to save health penny by penny,
a slow squeeze of breath from a sponge,
or to arch the pelvis higher?