Mirror Image/Lately Linda

So, this is my face now. 

The age spots are beginning to connect up in such a way that I soon won’t need to go outside “to get a little color” - it'll be built in. 

The lines on my face are not merely lines any longer. They are a series of crevasses and fissures, each one as deep and real as the years that put then there. 

Some of them deepened through joy and laughter, some of them carved by loss and unfathomable sadness, but each one honest. 

And some new ones, thanks to Covid 19. 

There is not trace of the brown-haired boy I used to be left in what passes for my my beard now. 

Gray, white and something in between appear when I skip shaving for a day or two. I guess it makes me look older, but I really can’t tell. 

The eyelids are drooping and the riot of cracks and lines surrounding my eyes look like a road map of a poorly-planned city; or, perhaps the tangled story of my life. 

But the eyes themselves, they still smile. 

They are as young as they ever were and as old as they are. They still burn with the white hot intensity of youth and promise, now tempered with the wisdom of age and promises broken. 

Countless advertisements tell me that these things can be fixed; lines smoothed, jaw-line tucked, colors adjusted, eyelids tightened. 

But ... who would I be then? 

Because this is my face now. 

My face. 

Mine.

Get the 'A Father's Heart' book

 

Leave a comment