An Ease
Editor Underground
Oubah Osman
My mother dyes her hair on Sundays,
takes the steely grey out of her curls.
All the gleam that framed her so strikingly,
flooded with a youthful blackness,
a fresh shade of ‘carbon’.
Aging seems surreal and so
much more alive than youth.
When I turned 15,
every night I’d dream that I was
picking out my teeth. One by one,
they’d come out with a small, ivory
plop!
and suddenly I’d be toothless
and satisfied,
pure in my fresh shade of pink!
I couldn’t believe it.
The joy, the strange way
that my gums met like old friends,
sighing towards each other,
mirrored flesh beneath flesh.
I imagine growing old is like
this. Some strange and new desire
to see the hue clearer, to meet
oneself, to know
that once all the things,
the useful things, the tools
of the body are gone,
there is an ease to life, and
a satisfaction.