faces

my face looks so different to me lately. in photos, mirrors, the windows on the train. is it just getting older? the roundness of my cheeks? the pores spreading their wings? my hair falls differently, my eyes less assured. too many home cooked meals & days sleeping in. maybe i only recognize myself shriveled, elongated, & fading. comfort doesn’t sit well in my chin, it’s puffy, exhausted. i think i keep telling myself the joy has returned to my eyes, but it’s really just the astigmatism, stretching the car lights & reflecting them back. i dream too often of being chased, but last night i was finally caught. today his hand sits heavy on my shoulder & again i wonder what i am so afraid of & when i became this fearful, soggy little thing. & the fear has become so familiar, like escarole soup & fleece blankets & my big sister’s cupcakes, that i create it, construct panic, even when wrapped in joy, even when lying in sunshine, even when maple syrup drips from my eyelids. i want to put it down. i want to drop it like a crystal bowl & watch it shatter beyond repair. i want the fear to never reform. but we do it scared. we do it anyway. but i want to do it lighter, enlightened, frolicking. i don’t want to carry that backpack with me everywhere i go. growing nodules & humpbacks & hunches & crates. i want to do it candy floss & dandelion flutters & on ice skates. there are boa constrictors in my rib cage & a noose around my throat. i sputter up my voice box, my vocal cords, my tar-stained lungs. everything tastes like red wine & real copper pennies & crumpled up tin foil hiding in homemade tuna sandwiches. my face is not my own & maybe it never has been. maybe i’m just borrowing it from my mother & my sister & my great grandmother & maybe i’m sewing together some sort of patchwork quilt from all of my ancestors’ cogs & pieces. maybe i’m not meant to see myself in my face because who i am is less nose & lips & flesh pulled over skull & more the sunflowers that grow in my chest plate & the shipwreck in my stomach & even the words on this page. the issue is i want my face to be my soul, i want them to see through me, see to me. i don’t want a face that needs to be painted & decorated & adorned just to show them all the soft bits, the dark bits, the sequined disco ball bits. i don’t want a face at all. i want it to be clear from jump that i am stilettos & lollipops & vases of daisies & cookie jars & assless chaps & a magic wand & the rabbit & the hat & the magician & his gloves. i want my mama & my exes & the man i think about at night & the strangers on the train all to instantly see the globe inside me & i want to see theirs & i wish we all wore microscopes & telescopes instead of faces. it’s all so human, for wretched & for blessed. it’s all so human to want to pour out the mess & not have to logic it all away but just have it slurped up through a crazy straw & belched onto the breeze. to be savored & swallowed & digested & believed. to be held in the tummy, to be held in the palm, like sapphires & rubies & used up lip balm. it is precious to rip open, to let the contents tumble out. & to not run away whether it’s crushed up sugar cube or actually anthrax. the bitter, the sweet, the remedy, & the poison — i want all of you & i want you to want the same of me. the whole world, the whole humanity. we can put our faces away, tuck them in so sound & sweet & let them gently rest & splay. if we try, we can put our faces away.