Her hair is buckwheat, straight,
hanging with the ease of
an assisted suicide.
And the smear, red and from
ear to ear, shows what she cannot:
that beauty is fluid and that we've forgot.

Sun-freckled and speckled
with cheap, off-brand gloss --
she is the monologue of
an anxious man across
the girl in the catalog, who
wore the Fall before the fall.