On Why You May Want to Reconsider Growing Up

CAUTION!

 As you age you may lose:

-joy from licking the sugar-dust off a stick of gum

-soles that can walk on gravel

-wishes from dandelion seeds

-your invisible friends

-magic

-the effects of fairy dust

-the ability to taste your dreams

                …or to even remember them.

This is for G-man at FF55.  Click on the link and check it out.

Daughter Ache - Magpie Tales #48

Daughter Ache

I Watch
As my daughter of seventeen
Preens in front of the bathroom mirror
Perfumes and lip glosses
Scattered across the counter
Contact lenses spooning
On her azure eyes
She is an opening flower
Still dewy with the new day of her life

She prepares herself like a sacrifice
Lacquering her lashes
Fitting silver droplets to her ears
Pale curls frustrate her most valiant
Efforts at containment
And erupt over her shoulders
She concentrates, lower lip thrust out
And the ghost of her three-year-old self
Escapes from my heart

And how can I let her go out
Into a hard, jagged world
Already riddled with casualties
When she is as vulnerable as a reed?
Yet, I cannot take this opening bud
And press it under glass
Or stick it in a dried arrangement
On my coffee table
Preserved and safe
And dead

I wrote this for and about my daughter Kate when she graduated from high school. She is an accomplished pianiast, so this week's Magpie prompt made me think of her.