Some girls, no matter their age, know
Beauty authored their bones, sure as star-fall,
and inhabits them still, extending
a singular charm that delights, like the one
collected with joy that adorns
my mother’s mid-century bracelet,
tarnished now. Can you picture
the tiniest kitchen scale?—
its dial the size of a dilated pupil,
the needle, an eyelash
that really swivels,
from one to our culturally perfect ten, although
grace, bone-deep, begins, Mama said,
light years away, arriving
among us, over and over.
Nor can it be reckoned, or earned,
no matter the distance traveled,
sheltering as the night sky.
Shine, then, she said, shine
before the body winks out.
—Laurie Klein, author of Where the Sky Opens. “Timeless” first appeared in Adanna Literary Journal and online Abbey of the Arts