My face is a mountain town. The nose is the highest peak,
and the mouth a little lake where swimmers cool their feet.
My face is a kind of shirt my skull wears. My ears
are my favorite part. They make awkward sleeves.
My face sometimes wears glasses—two round windows that focus me
forward but leave out the commotion at the sides.
My face remembers being a smaller face, being born from the cozy darkness
of my mother into New York City’s bright doom.
My face likes to study other faces, look for clues that grow along the eyes
and forehead of the kind of life that lives inside.
My face likes being silent, feeling cool autumn run along, whispering
across this looseness of skin, this quilt of pores.
My face stares straight into September’s green waiting for the leaves
to grow orange in their yearly wisdom.
My face each night feels its softness in pillows, and tethers in time
to the other faces spread along other pillows
in their own dark countries trekking toward new light.
My face imagines what it might be like as a foot, an elbow, a breast,
and what she might see from those different apartments.
My face is a kind of movie screen that plays the same films over and over.
