Dust settles
all over me.
It’s not that I am still.
No, I never have been.
Only, it is that I am
untasted,
untouched,
still wrapped,
still done up.
Like a Russian princess
in her abandoned castle that
emits purple smoke,
the remains charred from rebellion.

I’m waiting and waiting and waiting.

In the room next door
Genghis Khan strikes again.
It is not the nature of my mature years
to be jealous of her ransacked womanhood.
Instead,
I am wistful.
Dreamy-eyed and hopeful.

But the dust never stops falling
and I begin to wonder
if I would not have fared better
as an Egyptian princess,
her time
eternal.