Golden Girls

 Golden Girls”


“Away with your youth” mama used to say;

She’d climb onto me, become me;

Slither under my untightened bow like hopes;

Snatching away the coins that my body yield.


At 15, a boy turns a man they say;

At birth, a girl a woman;

So she sits her wax body wide apart and becomes;

One of those, the golden girls.


The days are tight like those smaller bangles on a mature hand;

The men come and go, the women howl in rows;

“their wives must not let them leave”;

But from where are we to dye our breed?


The night becomes a mercy of the lords;

The singing man faints, the rising bird dies;

The woman becomes a soul from the body;

And there caressing her ghostly wedlock she lies.

  • Ashnita Saraswat