vanity
Pick up that there magazine
and peer into its pages.
What do you see?
Porcelain women dripping
in gold light,
eternalized in the color of
warmth, of beauty.
Pearly-skinned flower-things with
ocean eyes reflecting
in the setting sun.
It’s a mirage,
you know.
I thirsted for it too once,
when the world was
tinted blue.
Strip the varnish from my soul and
let me show you the
devastating night.
Aching gray translucent bodies writhe
before they turn to dust,
a season of brush on
the forest floor.
When color leaves the soul it
bruises the body.