Beauty Shop

The signage on the foreground makes

a hefty promise of discount –so we enter

the beauty store, shuffling in

to an extensive album of soaps, lotions, fragrances.

Inside, the walls are papered peach. Light

slopes in, forms puddles on the zigzag of tiles,

cleaned every hour to restore its glossy lips

of ceramic. Meanwhile, a corner sweetens with

bits of molten sugar scrubs. And the sink froths

with cleansers milked from wild seaberries. I take my time, read

aloud the product labels while you spritz along your neck,

honeysuckle extracts, jojoba hearts, muddled sprigs

of lavender. And it takes just a moment to realize,

within this cube of plush confine, that all but one

are welcome here –age, the tick of time,

the climb of years, their ultimate, all-consuming fears.