Body Swap Poem by David Lewis Paget

She’d gone on her own to the party,
But sadly, for she was alone,
Her partner had left her in limbo,
Had not even said he was going.
A month had gone by, with never a word
And nothing to say why he’d gone,
She looked in the mirror for why she was spurned
But life, as it does, carries on.

Nothing had changed in her that she could see,
She still had her beautiful hair,
Her lips were as full as they ever could be,
Her eyes had that hypnotic stare.
Her figure was slim, and as firm as it was
When her partner decided to leave,
If there was a problem, it had to be him,
Which left her no reason to grieve.

The party she went to was stranger than strange,
With Bogans, Goth make-up and Greens,
She guessed that their ages for most of them ranged
From middle-aged matrons to teens.
A pair of Goth sisters were eyeing her off
And flattering her, to deceive,
‘My, there is a beauty, the best of the lot,
I’d fit her, I think, with a squeeze.’

They twittered and tittered between them, the two,
Whose beauty had long gone to seed,
Whatever they’d had, it was plain that it flew
When excess took over from need.
They fed her with drinks and exotic confects
That she hardly liked to refuse,
Her hold on the present was slight, I reflect,
Her sadness was yesterday’s news.

The ugliest sister, whose name was July,
Rolled in like a mist to her brain,
The cunning of eyes and a whispered surprise
Made her think she was going insane.
She felt herself ebbing, and losing control
As July held her hands in her own,
And then somehow gelling with tissues and cells in
Some fatness that she’d never known.

She watched through a mist as the girl she had been
Laughed loudly, and then turned away,
Embracing the sister, that other unclean,
‘We’ll get you one, some other day! ’
Her body felt loose, like an oversize suit
And her lips could but slobber and cry,
‘What have they done to my beautiful youth, ’
As she turned to a mirror, to cry.

14 February 2014