First Meeting
John Hayes
Quiet beauty clothed in white
lies on silk in hollowed oak.
“That’s your cousin,”
they told the four year old, nearly five.
Mouth agape, eyes wide, he stared.
He’d never seen her before.
“Sugar diabetes,” they said.
“And only twenty years old.”
“Terrible, right in her prime.”
She didn’t stir
all the while he watched.
“Will I get that way too?” he asked.
“Yes, everyone does.”
