As time etches its story across your face, it draws lines in new and unexpected ways. Your right eyebrow might grow weary, thinning with the weight of years. While the left, fades into the shadows of sadness and sorrow. Still, the art of crafting the perfect face remains a mystery to you. Your eyeliner, much like the path you've walked, is bold but never quite straight. A testament to a life lived outside the lines, I suppose.
Notice how gravity gently tugs at your cheeks. With each stroke of blush, you attempt to paint back the youth, carving angles in a face that softly protests with a natural sag. Each application, a hope to recapture a fleeting assumption of prominence. And your lips, those small, pouting rebels, seem to tell their own story… As you recall the words once cast upon you, “You always look like you've just been kissed and left." Uttered long before any had dared to kiss you. Since then, so many have kissed and left; you wonder if that voice from the past had cursed you.
Ahhh but your mouth, crowded with the ghosts of words unspoken and chances not taken, struggles to wear the years gracefully. Your forehead gathers spots and wrinkles like a collector of times both bitter and sweet. And let's not overlook the constellation of freckles framing the deep blues of your gaze, once mere speckles, now beauty marks; the galaxy of your youth turning into the map of your maturity.
Soon, they say, your eyes might need the aid of bifocals. That word, which to you, sounds more like a wet blanket than a medical prescription. You will resist, for you are proud of the way you wear, “The stars scattered across your skin and the ocean depths in your eyes”. At least, that’s what your Nana told you. And, when do Nana’s lie? Her truths were as real as the face and eyes she silently passed down through generations. Only a woman so small and wise could give birth to herself so many times. Giving birth not just to children, but to legacies, to stories, to the very essence of resilience and beauty.
In her eyes, as in yours, lies the reflection of a journey. Marked by both the giving and the receiving of life's profound kisses and inevitable goodbyes.
Love, Liz
(Your Granddaughter)
Comments