My Best Face

FACES

We are made of fibers, pathways, and sinews. The bare form before we are given faces. A tangle of strings, you begin, as delicate loops dropped into water. God will place the blood in you, drop by drop, as you learn movement floating with the subtle currents. Every lift, every unfurl, every curl of our fibers determine gestures. The expressions we can conjure are learned in the way we move then, and we are built complete from water and careless strings to be people with tinted skin, racing pulses, and heavy bones.

We have faces that change:

I.
you are born in discomfort
which is healthy

the crying a pitch from healthy lungs
healthy baby—you look like your father

when he tries to fight a migraine
every muscle scrunched to his nose

tense and relax and tense
you are clean but still red in the face

they’ll look at you with open mouths
wide eyes elated; they’ll discover you

anew, adorned—ah! ouu nananana
healthy baby, open your eyes

II.
little outbursts are your language
triggered by hunger, the pang

& a tickle under your chin
your mother’s loss-your mother’s reappearance
blown kisses on your cheeks

lift the corners
a toothless smile with disappearing eyes

III.
suspicion is in the eyebrows
unleveled to be onto something

being guilty strikes a line on the forehead
worry mounted to the wrinkle

It wasn’t me, you defend
and look to the side

eyefluttering

IV.
there will be no reason when it happens
this numbness to existence

it’s a heavy concept
more complicated than chicken soup
and its brothy medicinal ways

you hold a blankness in your irises
and a neutrality in your lips

they will quiver sometimes
eyes will draw water onto your clothes

and there will be no reason

V.
when he loves you he doesn’t see double chins
as you lift your head to see his gaze

It feels so good, you stare

exhaling into the night
head held back
the twitches of pleasure

you make double chins together in a photo
tucking inside jokes in the folds

VI.
everything opens until a cut cord
detaches you from your offspring

healthy baby—you look like your father
round face and a flat nose

and the pain of pregnancy and birth
is eased by siestas, lots of rest

in years to come, the face will calm
and pain will be healed by rest

VII.
Our best face is the sleeping one where we are unconscious of what day it is and what will be. In the water, you were covered in human features at last. Nerves and vessels hidden within the average body empowered by your individual soul. When they deliver you, you first open your eyes to see. Your parents let you sleep, half-heartedly. They ask that you don’t grow too quickly; you’re too cute to be asleep the whole day. Your lover lets you sleep beside him but moves around to maybe wake you. It’s too early to be in so deep in a dream, he thinks. And your body doesn’t allow you to sleep, demanding that there is so much more to do than be quiet until sunrise.

When you’re old enough to be embarrassed, your mother and father will open your bedroom door to get a glimpse of your best face. Sometimes you catch the little thud of the door closing behind them in the morning and wait patiently. Cocooned in blankets and drooling, you are theirs. A face that is of their likeness. A face that can change the moment you wake up.