by Lauren Mclaren

Created on: September 28, 2009   Last Updated: February 05, 2011

Aging Beauty

She wore her dress like a tired cliche,
harlot red and soaked with her failures.
Her dignity dangled threadbare and frayed,
a ragged hem mended by too many tailors.

She ached inside with the wanting to be
sophisticated, eloquent, perhaps arcane,
but even in silence, the dress fairly screamed
bland words, absurd notions, all so inane.

Captive spectators gathered to deem
pointless, they said, sad and futile.
without the decency even to seem
a younger girl, so fresh and nubile.

A beautiful girl now wrinkled by time
distraught with age and weary of yearning,
she seeks and searches for the sublime
knowing only her hell and its wild burning.

Time slides away, a bill uncollected.
Her youth is a memory sweetly untamed.
They walk together with a gait disconnected,
an unlikely pair, one lost and one blamed.

Learn more about this author, Lauren Mclaren.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.