going to the poetry reading at the college as a 36-year-old hits different 

I think more about the poets as people 

Whether she hates her day job as a dishwasher at the old folks' home or if she's happy for its simplicity after years of case work 

Whether she wishes she didn't have to work, at the social services agency or the old folks' home or anywhere else—decades later and still toiling 

The degree to which she is striving to look happy to be there, even though she must be so tired, or whether she is a person capable of being that truly happy about reading poetry even while tired or maybe, if not unfathomably, she is not even feeling all that tired while working a day job

How his slender 60-year-old body feels while he perches on the backless chair made of taut nylon stitching stretched between a couple stubby horseshoes of plastic  

How they've sustained their writing life when, decades into it, they are speaking for an audience of eight people  

How they practice loving each other

What they will do when they finish the poetry reading and the chatting afterward and go home