Decaying Beauty
by Ruqaya Hamel, Al Siraat College
Years 9 – 10 Ekphrastic Poetry Finalist
‘Rudolf II of Habsburg as Vertumnus’ by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (c.1590)
I pin flowers to my chest
to sweeten the air
around the rot
Cherries for lips
because real mouths
speak too much truth
I weave grapes through my hair
so I look heavy with life
instead of hanging loose
I make my cheeks from apples
red enough to seem warm
ripe enough to seem wanted
I hide my neck with leaves
and twisting roots
because soft things
break the fastest
I wear wheat like a halo
gold threaded through my skull
so people mistake hunger
for holiness
Decay is my best material
I just arrange it
To look like beauty
A pear for the nose
A fig for the ear
Silk from the corn
for the beard
Everything I wear
was alive before me
Everything I am
dies for the look of me
I stand very still so nobody notices
how much i’m falling apart
Beauty is really just ruin
with borrowed perception
and a willing gase
Take one thing away
-one cherry
one stem
one fruit
gone soft
under its own weight-
and I come apart quietly
Petals sinking inward
Grapes splitting at the skin
Apples collapsing into brown
until every piece remembers
it belonged somewhere else
and I am left rotting in the frame
I built to be adored