Rotting Beauty

A Poem by mulderigj

The assignment was to use the same words at the ends of each line and rotate them in each stanza.

The photo kept you lean while it aged
Holding up your crab apple cheeks and black lashes wet
from the makeup that kissed your round face.
Your grey eyes stay lit on the sheen of the paper
even as your lips lax from their puckered shape.
Unyielding, it guards your youth and wildly beauty

But the years have worked to dim your beauty
Wrinkles pulled at your once hard body, now softened with age,
leaving you an oblong mass, rather than your hour glass shape
The stick of all the August months you’ve seen cling to your skin, wet
and thick; “Time is unforgiving,” starts your poem, scribbled on your paper
Which is as old and yellowed as your heavy, sullen face

You stare at the red ticking arm of the clock face,
Piecing together how you got to be this rotting beauty
Where no amount of blush can reshape your fallen cheeks, now paper-thin,
Or hide the mulberry bags tacked under your eyes, the same deep hue of wine that has aged
just as you have. But you’re left to envy that wine’s fine texture, wet
and reforming, effortlessly taking on any wine bottle's shape.

Your sickly arms won't return to their firm shape.
Your hair hangs flat, stuck to your olive-colored face,
which was once a sweet honey brown. Your fingers stay wet

from the blood of your cough and that vibrant red is the only thing beautiful
about you anymore. In a new day and age,
you're no lively than shadows; the only remembrance of your old-self captured on paper

Your hands, which were once delicate enough for crafting paper,
Now rest, lifeless, callused and misshapen
on the tools you would use to try and hide your age.
But no tool or potion can richen your face.
It seems that your tongue has darkened with your beauty,
as you curse the gods for letting you live, drowning in wet tears

The sobs, and the rage, and the remorse keeps your lips wet,
soaked in the words that you now burn on to your paper.
You tell the story of how you once had been beautiful,
But Time had defeated you, stripping you of shape,
figure, and firmness; leaving you a sack of skin with a face
as hollow and sad as a browning peach is aging

You wipe your wet face, drenched from your hard cries,
and take the paper which tells the story of your age in your hands.
Your words will keep their beauty, when your body loses shape.