They say you’ll go gray
Premature
as if I would wither and
fade to gray.
A woman turned cold.
Burnt golden once
and then made old.
A silver strand
demarcating the end
of my womanhood
The descent into the one
and only
The descent into worthlessness
no ripening
only falling apples
picked for this season’s memory
once crisp and sweet
but destined to turn sour and cruel
inevitably.
Premature beauty
fades away quickly.
I’ll take a bite out of the apple
and let the juices roll down my chin.
I say I’ll be the maiden
and the crone.
I say I’ll be the woman
wise and wondrous and
wonderful.
There is no purpose
in premature gray if only
to say I was here for a moment
and you were listening too.
Ilyssa Goldsmith graduated Summa Cum Laude from Arizona State University with a bachelor’s in communication. She enjoys writing poetry, which sounds out the space where the muse, myth, and female desire reside. Ilyssa is passionate about exploring the nature of the repressed female psyche within her poetry. She believes language can be utilized as a tool for discovery, healing, and recovery. Ilyssa keeps a dog-eared copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass close to her bed and is known to cite her favorite lines to anyone who will listen on a daily basis. Her work appears in Normal Noise, The Maynard, Canyon Voices, and elsewhere. She is currently working on her first poetry collection.
Write On, Downtown 