Looking Into the Lens

 

‘Do you think I look like a clown?’ I mean to ask my chiropractor today. Because she's a sweetie and she tells truths. 

I am an old lady still wearing make-up, because that is what I’ve always done. But I see the other painted old ladies and notice the incongruity between their cosmetics and their wrinkles. Would I be better to leave the colours off? Leave the bare face to exist quietly, fading into the background? It’s not that the make-up makes us look young. 

To make something up is to tell a lie, isn’t it? When I was very young, I told truths and was disbelieved. There were things I saw which others didn't. Fairies at the bottom of my garden ... They thought I made it up. 

No-one thinks my make-up on my face is telling the truth; I’m sure they never did. And yet we speak of ‘bare-faced lies’! 

I meant to ask my chiropractor, but I forgot. We had other things to discuss. Her mother here for a visit, how to ride a boogie board at 80, the exact location of my pain ... that her mother’s mother lived to 102.

Afterwards I take a couple of selfies instead. But it won’t be a true test. I know that the made-up face looks better in photos than my elderly skin. Also I pose the image for best effect. (I know, you see, that I’m really un-beautiful. The girl within me knows how deeply this matters.)

‘Hello, lovely,’ she greeted me. I thought, of course, she referred to the fact that she likes me. We have a rapport. Now I allow myself to wonder. Did she mean she likes the way I look? Does she see what I cannot see?

Lightning flashes outside. The warning app on my phone crackles. I’m glad I don’t have to walk around out there now. I’m glad to be safely back home with my old face, painted or not. And with a cessation of pain.

The wallpaper on my screen is a bare, dead tree I used to love. I passed it every time I drove to town. It had, I thought, a stark beauty. I’m glad I preserved it. I photographed it only a couple of days before it was felled to the ground by a lightning strike. 

NaPoWriMo Day Twenty-One

This wandered away from the prompt – except for being a prose poem, which was the bit that wasn't specifically requested anyway. 

(With great restraint I resisted editing the selfies.)

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United for Friday Writings #175: StormyWeather. Although not written for that prompt, it does  contain mention of stormy weather.