You Can Look

I am the beautiful untouchable.
I am the ball everyone plays with but when the boys and girls
Are called in for dinner I am left out on someone’s lawn in the rain and the cold
Where I lie forgotten in a pile of leaves leaking air, oozing life
Until the next time the children want to play with me and look for me
And find instead an empty, used up shell that falls to pieces when it is touched.

I am the beautiful untouchable.
I am praised and loved and bought drinks and made to feel special
Until two o’clock in the morning when everyone is tipsy and warm and headed home
Together in small groups laughing and embracing and stumbling into the night air
I am the one left behind, walking alone on the sidewalk unsteady and disremembered.

I am the beautiful untouchable,
The Virgin Mary, the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa
The cold and lonely lovely work of art, carved in stone, painted on a canvas
Watch out you can look but you better not touch
I will fall apart in your hands.