highlyeccentric | Times Change and We Change with Them or We Seem to Have Lost Touch with Each Other

There are so many girls now in the street
who look like Noelle
who lived behind a green door and a garden
in the heart of the West Village
with waterbugs in her half-kitchen
and a persistent sense of death.

But now they all seem much younger.
They have more and less time to play, to dye
their hair blonde or try yoga
and winnow the chaff from their bodies -
spare in the fashion of today -
which was not quite so in the days of Noelle
and perhaps with luck
that was never Noelle's
these girls may learn to distinguish
their growing grain from a cancer.

Noelle was skinny and strong
and prone to a host of ailments.
After her tenth accident
she began
to develop an ulcer
saw an analyst
who died, and then went into advertising.
Noelle moved out of her green house
into midtown, and had gained weight
the last time I saw her.

Perhaps now she is also dead.

All the young girls who wear her faces
are much cooler now
one can tell right away
they are impregnable.
Most of them know that
a sense of death
is often the sign
of internal bleeding.