Elegy

by Susan Smpadian

In the beginning there was flesh, and with the flesh there was full lips, and cheeks, and eyes

that weren't sunken into the head.

There was non-calculating youth and pristine dignity. Yes, in the very beginning there was beautiful flesh

and beautiful white teeth.

There was a perfectly straight nose with perfectly shaped nostrils, nostrils that hardly flared from anger or hatred

or anything bad.

Youth seems to last for a day and no more,

and so one day, a child is small and a mother is young,

and the next day, a child is grown and a mother is feeble.

A bud has blossomed, a bird has flown,

and the end of a world from only yesterday to now

is nearer than something called Tomorrow.

In the end there was flesh too,

but flesh that had forgotten itself in the middle of a night, dumbly dazed losing its senses forever.

There were thin lips that could hold no smile.

There were eyes now sunken deep into a frail sweet head,

eyes that recognized no one.

There was a tongue that moved heavily, frantic for water,

and still the nostrils never flared

and still the dignity never waned.

But the child that the flesh had borne long ago kept asking,

"Mother, whose child am I? Whose child am I?"

The answer was lost somewhere between midnight and morning when the moon deserted a sky looking down on a frail

and shaking frame that was waiting for a trace of sun.

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