I have needed a new face for ten years now.
The old one was stuck, like a mask, with
a frown and a perfect look of misery.
It refused to move like a spoilt child and I
had to make apologies for it endlessly.
I would like a face with a smile, one that
would greet everyone with pleasure and not
some troublesome weight of sorrow. I would
feel complete, then, ready to face anything
that might come along. I would not be startled,
I would use my smiling face to smooth things
out, to solve problems.
And everyone who saw it would whisper
that its wearer must be attentive to happiness,
to a delightful life airy and full of joy.
Even at night when the moon shines bright
on cold nights, the curtains offering no
protection from winds, even on such nights
my smiling face would radiate bliss,
I would become envied by others. I would
sleep each night, smiling, and wake each
morning, smiling, and there would be nothing
to stop me at all from making light of anything
and everything that happens.
Only when I saw you after ten long years
a smiling face seemed such a stupidity.
There was nothing there to smile about,
the old face formed in seconds, the taut
mouth fixed into an altered grimace, the old
excuse.
How quickly things can alter, one moment
a solid resolution to improve, to change
what the past had done, and in another
moment something from the past is forced
into the present and lets develop all the old
events, the old mistakes.
A lifetime of excuses rushes in to meet
you, each mistake detailed for your pleasure,
written huge and bold and bright. Nothing
can alter such events except perhaps
a letting go of the past, private moments
exorcised at last. And what smiling face
can undo such things? But you were gone
in minutes and I had work to do building
a face of contentment, one that would
say to anyone and everyone how pleased
I had become, my smiling face brighter
than any magic, brighter still than God.