John Grey
Looks
It’s a time of your life
when you fall face down
on the bed a lot.
There’s nothing wrong
that you can name
and yet your mood requires it.
Maybe it has something to do
with beauty – your beauty.
You once thought
it would guarantee happiness.
Now it just sits useless
on your skin.
That’s why your nose,
your brow, your mouth, your chin.
are pressed deep into the pillow.
Even on a warm, cloudless day.
You have this vision of yourself
as a bent-backed crone,
thumbing through a box of old photographs.
Your poses dominate.
There’s the lovely face,
the silky, falling hair,
the careless, confident shoulders.
But the more you stare
into each and every one of them,
the more they seem to be
someone other than you.
The mirror tells you
it’s all still there.
But the pillow says,
life has slipped away from you,
like a coat falling from a hook.
Slowly you turn your face,
and the pillow releases you.
You rise because your body
still remembers how.
And the mirror comes to your aid.
A face looks back –
not the one from the photographs,
not the one you mourn –
but a face that has lived.
You touch your cheek
and it is warm.
You say, oh, so this is me now.
And the world, softening around you,
says yes.