The Aging Wine of Being

She was staring into the contours of the mirror which ever-echoed her lined face back to her. Her hands looked like tree trunks, rough and dry and wrinkled. She smiled, though forcedly. 1

She was like a great division inside. One part of her thought she was even more beautiful than before due to her age, while another nudged that she was inadequate now--even more fragile, even more weak, and still just like a lost teenager. 2

Oddly enough, each of these sides found manifestation to different people in her life. 3

She took out a toothbrush and watched as the ever-trailing simulacrum of her image moved the brush to and fro on a seemingly endless number of teeth. 4

She threw on her underwear, staring at her saggy breasts in the mirror. It seemed ages ago that those breasts had be succulent, contoured, and dazzling. 5

While she was just putting her bra on, her husband approached, glaring revealingly at her breasts. 6

She covered them up for that part of herself that felt she was no longer pretty--and was now just a mere figment of the grounded truth she used to be. 7

"C'mon, honey. You know I love you and think you're just as beautiful as the day I met you." 8

She looked at him and said, "I know, I know. But. . ."9

"But what, honey? What is it? Why do you torture yourself like that?" 10

"I don't know"11

"This society has a plastic conception of beauty. Why wouldn't age be like a fine wine drunk by being?" 12

He came close and hugged her, whispering into her ear. "You're beautiful." 13

In his head, he imagined that she was a fine wine and he was drinking her in during these moments of closeness and love.14

She smiled, and forgot about that part of herself that found her age disgusting. 15

But five minutes later, like a crow harbinger above, she had to go to work.16

Work was the usual boringness--sitting behind a desk. Though, unknown to any one in the office, and to her husband especially--she was logged onto an IM client--as she always was at work, talking to someone she had made damn sure no one knew of.17

She also had a webcam--a very small, unnoticeable one--but one all the same. 18

She had met machineofbones--whose real name was Willow--years ago at this point. He was only twenty-one, and she was fifty. 19

It was here, with Willow, under the tree of his pixel words--that she found shelter in that part of herself that was still wild, free, and young. 20

Willow was an extremely brilliant, intelligent boy--an artist to the core. Daily, while she did her work and also talked to him--he would send her new works of his art; some even in dedication to her--that he had mailed to her office, and which lay on her wall.21

The one laying right against the ceiling facing her desk was full of eyes with doors for pupils, with spiralic eyebrows and the skitter-skatter of enigmatic beauty, which caught the eye and made it see faces and figures here and there--depending on how the image looked. Like a Rorschach blot of subconsciousness--she could see snakes (which Willow was quite fond of), DNA helices, and even--she thought--her own face, though her young face--antiquated forever.22

As far as Willow knew, Janie was only twenty-five, single, and was quite interested in him. He kept a picture of her as his wallpaper and she was one of his many inspirations. 23

Today Willow sounded pretty high--he smoked cannabis regularly. She had at first been kind of taken aback by that fact--but slowly, by listening to Willow, she learned she was just being ignorant.