dirty beauty

2011-02-11
by Eleanor Goldfield

a dirty beauty,

like skylines soft with smog –

someone once asked me to search for night in the day.

i found it to be rather easy.

darkness is not fixed point,

it is a wavering sense of mind,

it is an ever-changing point,

colored by your eyes.

i found no darkness in the day,

because i was happy,

naive,

unaccustomed to the dark shades i live through now.

i’ll never have that again tho.

even if my cynicism were to retreat

and the jovial youth were to wander back in,

it would be out of place.

it would look up amongst pillars of my experiences,

my growth

and feel small and unwelcome.

it could not frolic through apathetic fields

but would instead find itself

in the cumbersome caverns of deeper thoughts,

ponderings and questions.

i do not yearn for that time.

i am nostalgic for it.

but i am content in these times –

i am content that my mind finds

via my senses a life

to sustain itself –

there is much to learn, much to do.

i would not appreciate that

if i wore my youth beyond its welcome.

i am no longer that simple beauty –

i am a dirtier beauty…

but i am fine with that.