Twilight

Twilight smiles at me,
her pearly dentures sunk to the bottom of  her water glass.
Arthritic joints creak, and she slips into wrinkles and gray
like I slip into the seat farthest from her.
She swirls the dentures with a spoon, just as,
behind her shoulder, pink swirls over the world’s chin,
disfiguring the pure face like the zit on Twilight’s chin.

Twilight motions for a waiter.
For a second, he and another waiter get tangled, but he
dances away, graceful as a gazelle, then
moves, a blur of specter-white chopstick legs .
He frowns as she lifts her dentures back into her mouth,
and she smiles at him, clacking out some
request.

I can almost smell the aroma of muscle rub
and moth balls rising up off her skin, and I wonder
if she isn't hiding something in her deep creases.

If I believed in it, I could Botox myself
young forever, but what can she do?
Twilight fades outside, and part of the
darkness seeps in through the cracks
in the walls, burying itself inside me
to a secret place where, one day, it will
be kept tucked  within my wrinkles,
the secret of youth...