Friends' Photos by Ruth Fainlight

We all looked like goddesses
and gods, glowing and smooth, sheathed
from head to foot by a golden essence
that glistened and refracted its aura
of power - the wonderful ichor called youth.

We moved as easily as dolphins
surging out of the ocean, cleaving
massed tons of transparent water
streaming away in swathes of bubbling
silver like the plasm of life.

Still potent from those black and white
photos, the palpable electric
charge between us, like the negative
and positive poles of a battery,
or the fingers of Adam and God.

We were beautiful, without exception.
I could hardly bear to look at those
old albums, to see the lost glamour
we never noticed when we were
first together - when we were young.

Lost Generation by Jonathan Reed

First Contact by Hattie Grunewald

The day the optician unframed my face
and took away my childhood:
I would no longer hide behind glass;
I would wear eyeliner and wink
at boys with smiles and piles of math textbooks.

I balanced my new life on the ball of my finger,
its translucent rim and pooled blue rainbows,
I said "This will make me pretty."
My spectacles rolled their lenses
and dozed in the bottom of my bedside drawer.

The first day I wore contact lenses,
my eyes glittered. But no one noticed,
looking right through me with their 20/20 eyes.