LYRICAL POEM
We Carry Our Histories on Our Faces
A letter to the one who will inherit my history
Darling, may I show my love for you? I’ve got wrinkles for you. I have them because my heart and history appear on my face. I will fold my skin when I’m around you and let my life story color my cheeks — I will look you in the eyes and let you see me. My skin will lose elasticity because of this, that I know, but it’s okay. This stretched skin is what I can give you. Will you take it?
If I inject my face with botulinum, you won’t be able to tell how much I adore your silly jokes and how I think your smile is like touching God. If I get fillers, you won’t know my trajectories, the years I spent searching in faraway lands, finding and losing myself again and again. You just won’t know that I bought Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can’t We? when it first came out in 1993 and sat on the floor unfolding the cassette insert to memorize the lyrics I still have in my head, the lyrics I sing at random moments. You would never know all of this if my face was too supple and tight for a forty-two-year-old. If I change my likeness and history, I’d simply have blood on my hands and I’d owe you an apology.
Carry your heart where we can see it, won’t you please? Don’t erase the years. I won’t erase any, darling. What do I see? A twinkle in your eye? Is any of this working? Some around me in this dopamine land are driving me mad with their posts that blur it all. It was. It will never be again, they seem to say. They don’t look you in the eyes anymore. Hug them and tell them you love them for who they are. Listen. They are living things.
Let me tell you that these wrinkles are proof that I’ve been here long enough to not care about dumb trends and what others think of me. It’s my evidence of a life well lived, of moving from here to there, of trying and failing so often my knees hurt from falling. Though sometimes success will show up, too, don’t you worry. Isn’t that wonderful?
My face will tell you that I’ve forgiven and forgotten, and it’s been lifesaving. My heart was rotten once and in the grip of cancer, I hid in the bathroom at three in the morning to laugh at my bad luck and then cry until the sun came out. When no one was around, I’d scream like I had never screamed before. My face took it. More wrinkles appeared at edges I had never noticed before. I learned to let the rottenness go, darling, and my face softened. I forgave and then forgot. I’ve been under this miraculous sun of ours for a while time now and closely know the bad news and the good news. Both are impermanent.
Don’t overthink the years. You may find flaws in those worlds that sell you falsehoods, but who are these people you follow so passionately? Do they love you? Perfect squares entertain you with likes and comments, but please don’t measure your life in those. Don’t you know that God made you beautifully? This is how you were supposed to be. Come with me, darling. See your mother, grandmother and great-grandmother when you glance at yourself in the mirror. You will carry your ancestors on your face because you inherited their spirit, even if not their blood. Can you see them? They will fill you with dreams that belong to you. Walk with them.
Time will not stop, that I know. The years will add up until we are no longer here at all. And while time matters and is integrated in the totality, there is more. Our most beautiful secret is the poetry that’ll never be written, but instead, we’ll carry on our faces. I will see myself in you and you will see yourself in me. Please don’t erase us. If we’re really lucky, one day we’ll get to cross the mystery threshold with the proof of life etched on our skin.
While you are asleep, darling, the moon will shine above the flamboyant tree and I will feel the years on my face and weep. I will step into the stillness and silence. I will recover the kind of joy I lost when I was young. It will feel like peeling that Cranberries cassette on the floor all over again. I will learn new lyrics and sing them all to you. You’re spinning me around, my feet are off the ground.
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