she remembers beauty   â   pulchritude like a stubborn stain,   bleeding from cloth to skin to marrow.   the years have siphoned it from her,   a slow larceny of the crux of comeliness,   leaving only a gossamer shell.   half - mast gaze probes the slivers of woman mirrored by her glass,   the stem luxuriating between her fingers,   its bowl cradling a shallow pool of water.     [   fragments of storm,   really;   elsa hasnât been woman in a long while,   not quite.   ]     there might still be beauty there,   she thinks,   beneath facsimiled flesh but above beating non - heart.   the creature in her reflection stirs,   echoes of half - light rising and falling with the gust of breath that escapes aged,   wearied lungs.
what happens to anything beautiful?   with languid flourish of a delicate wrist,   the water in the glass becomes a maelstrom contained;   not by any arcane feat,   but by something entirely worldly.   sidling onto scarlet mouth is a bramble - rose smile   â   an ancient overgrowth finally unearthed.     ââ    anything beautiful cannot last.    ââ     all stains are ephemeral,   after all,   subjugated by the numinous hands of time.   vivid irises unfurl slowly,   settling on the woman before her.     [   the word woman tastes strangely amiss.   ]     ââ    what do you think happens?    ââ
