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Grade
11

Today I realized that you will die.

Looked on the other side of the subway pole,

Flanked on either side by children younger than me,

And saw the weight of life on your face—

Misery has made you its sculpture.

 

I am grateful for the dye in your hair.

It has protected me from premature realization— 

The white, the grey can only hurt me when naked;

Its clothing helps me forget that

Your paint is slowly flaking off, inch by inch.

 

Mother, my body too was once an image of girlhood:

An uncultivated field of grain, a grassy plain.

But I do not recognize these sandy dunes and swells—

Wrapped this new continent in billowy fabric,

But this is no art, I am no Jeanne-Claude[1].

 

I wish I could preserve this in a poem.

The crushing subway ride, the children, us, and all—

Freeze youth with metaphor, free vitality in rhyme.

But after our marble breaks down, we will be refashioned, 

Buried beside each other in whichever museum awaits us. 

 

 

[1] Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon and her husband Christo Vladimirov Javacheff created works of art from the late 20th century onward based on nature and the environment, such as wrapping buildings and landscapes with fabric.