Published on: 6/14/2010
Reinventing Yourself

I hadn't seen you for a while.
When we met
I didn't recognize you.

Face smooth as a china doll
with startled eyes.
Skin sheared from bone
and hoisted up like a reluctant flag
into an Elizabethan forehead,
a white road now mapping your hairline.
Eyebrows arched like bird wings
about to take flight.

Each word carefully enunciated,
your lopsided smile
trying to stretch skin no longer there,
lips swollen
as if you'd been kissed by a bee.

Questions I don't ask:
Were you raw and bleeding
like a peeled beetroot
dressed in mummy wrappings,
stapled like a box,
and shipped out the door?
Was it painful?
Was it expensive?
Was it worth it to have
that strange doll's face
forever startled?
Did it heal the disorders of the mind?