She envisions the contenders scattered                     
along some ragged starting line a mile long.  
Who knows when her body parts heard On Your Mark
or when the gun cracked Go?                     
Birth?  Or some mysterious cellular
shift in her fifties, drift in her sixties?  

She imagines each having left
its starting gate  –  overworked pancreas, scarred
liver and kidneys, narrowed blood vessels
and shrinking synapses –
progressing in steady pace til they converge
at the vanishing point:   Poof!
And here she springs her hands open,
fingers spread in surrender.