Women's Writes - Works

Women's Writes

Well-behaved women seldom make history.
— Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Day 12

Okay, so I sort of lied the other day…well, more like exaggerated. That list of random words? I actually had a few left over, ones that didn’t fit. So I worked those into a poem for today, a poem about women and growing old.

IMPLICIT DECAY

 

Women have a short shelf life.
We are marked by
Implicit decay.
We may seem beautiful,
Sexy, desirable.
But when you wake up tomorrow,
We will have lost a fraction of that.
A fraction more the next day,
And with every day that passes
We continue to decay.
And did I mention
The women used in advertising
Are not the ones you meet,
The ones you date,
The ones you marry.
They do not decay.|
They are just ink on a page.
The model does not wrinkle,
Only the page.
Her curves do not fill in.
She will smile all the time
And never ask you to help with the dishes.
But…
She is not warm.
She is not passionate.
She is not there for you when you hurt
Or laughing with you when you feel joy.
She does not understand the strange things you do,
Like leaving your socks on the back of the toilet
Or putting the dishes away upside down.
She cannot have long conversations with you.
She cannot explain the things she understands
And you do not,
Nor will she listen when you explain the things you understand
And she does not.
She will never age,
But she will not be there to grow old with you.|
Life is about more than youth and beauty.