Sieve
and hard angles, shoulders
like shelves, bellies like slides
to the most obvious
of pleasures, young women
all crisp curves, so round
and firm, their union seems
geometrically insoluble.
We soften as we age,
our geometries slipping
and sliding, in small
or quantum leaps,
bodies and definitions blurring
as we morph, like mercury,
into each new self we shape.
Living softens us
to fill death’s vessel,
not like the solid we seem,
but the liquid we are—
so we may slip the cup
like the sieve it is.