Cousins, Perhaps

A queen she was in long dead days. Her face

A gold and lapis mask to keep concealed

The pallid truth. To my right, an artist’s

Depiction of her as a youth. I find

Myself lost in those teenage eyes. Ageless,

Her silken, smooth skin shines in contrast to

The tattered linens of reality,

Wrapped tightly round her raisin flesh. Preserved

Organs long past expiry sit alone.

What teenage crush from bronze-age romance lives

Like a genie in the eroded air

Of her heart’s canopic jar?

I recall

When museums evoked a wonder for what

Was and never would be again. I’d run

Through colonnaded halls, pressing my face

Against the glass, a voyeur of the past.

My pensive reflection presently stares

Back. It seems as I’ve wandered, the future

Has loitered, so that soon I shall pass it

Bye for good. I look upon the wind-swept

Soul of a stranger. When did crows bury

Their feet in those eyes? Like desiccated meat,

When did a lifelong furrowed brow lead to

A fallowing of youth? When did those bones

Begin to ache?

I blink back at the jars,

At regal organs so distilled by time,

And feel as if in sympathy, a bout

Of heartburn coming on. I reach into

My bag, my cornucopia so dear:

Chapstick to stitch the barancas on my lips;

Ointment to irrigate arroyos etched

Upon my woven, well-worn palms; a cream

For every crack or crease, a pill

For every pain. Yet as I peer, I pause.

For once, my hands don’t bring me shame, instead

I’m reminded of my love for all things

That were and will not ever be again.

My cheeks tauten to a grin. My lips crack

A smile wide. I bid a fond farewell

To the queen that lives, still within the glass.

We are not so different.

                                       Cousins, perhaps.