A Route Not Followed

It occurs to me
I could have gone the other way
in the last 10 years of my life.
I could have kept part of what was old,
broken only a piece of it,
introduced a new fragment to plug in.
So I would have a new
and old life patched together.
I might have enjoyed the seams
that would quickly fill with
experiential plastic, transparent glue time
where I would respite.
I would be sitting and
traveling perhaps.
The real life segments would
soon develop boundaries,
memory would seal them from each other.
I could even take on different names
and make up different histories
which my memory would
embalm in plastic membranes.