Age Old Story

As I washed my hands in the bathroom I looked up into the mirror to see someone who looked vaguely like me

Hair once as brown as the rain drenched ground, now less peppered than salted

It would seem time has won.

Time has succeeded in solidifying stories of my youth into wrinkles on my face

Demonstrating that braille, in the medium of skin, is the language of age

And as each passing day dyes my hair, my parachute-less younger self skydives and dies with it

Making my body unrecognizable as I collide with the hair colored ground

The earth just as hard as the stare I give myself as I try to remember me as I once was

But I can’t.

Because back when my skin was as smooth as my worries and my smile a permanent fixture

I rarely looked at that glass stuck above my sink, and I sure as heck never looked at it twice

So I softened my stare, ran my hand through my hair, and thought of what made me miss these self sightings

It occurred to me then that the tale spoken in braille on my face did not just appear, but was written

And in my early days  I had missed my own gaze simply mesmerized by that tale’s epic writing

So finally I saw I didn’t look vaguely like me, but quite exactly as I should

An author well satisfied by the piece she is writing.

originally posted 8/20/16

Copyright©2016 Hannah Quense