Lilian Yong

By September 8, 2016 Uncategorized

Lilian Yong – (Year 12, Epsom Girls Grammar School, Auckland)

Cellar Door

This is the Age, you say,
and elbows send the bitter cup
that scrunches your eyes and shrivels your cheeks
into a precarious tilt.
(You said that it would grow on you.)

Oh, I say,
your excitement not catching.
Things are still, stagnant.

The best days of our lives, you continue,
and later, when you can't get the window
open fast enough, I see that you
had carrots, discoloured, descending
in a thin soup of acid and wine.

And later, between more facial contortions,
you say it will only get better,
and I can't help but smile.

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