Mask of a Maiden

BY CHASE TWICHELL

My lips are clay, for centuries

unkissed.

I thought middle age would not

pass so quickly.

Time is cruel. I look in the

mirror.

Now the word cruel scares me.

My ambition was once

to write the starlit poems of our
age,

our final words, which in any

case

are just graffiti from here on out,

yesteryear straight through to

the afterlife

(though wasn't the middle part

supposed to be longer?).
I wanted words to contain
consciousness,

so I was a child until I was old.