Making Faces in the Mirror

We used to be confident.

As kids we all ran around with our shirts off, boys and girls,

Jumping rope,

Throwing ideas into the air and catching them;

Our summer sweat was coated with a layer of dirt, chalk dust, and shameless freedom.

The tree in the front yard was a castle,

And our expressions were packed with wonder and emotion.

We saw everything through a filter of sunlight and graham crackers

And we stared at ourselves in the mirror, not assessing, but amusing

With silly faces,

Sticking our tongues out and widening our eyes,

Seeing how we could deform ourselves into utter hilarity.

We saw night, we saw day, and we felt love.

 

Now, we see dusk, morning, afternoon, evening and dawn,

And one day it dawned on us that we are not perfect.

I remember being introduced to the razor when mom decided I was too old to have hairy legs.

At the time I cherished the gesture as a sign of maturity.

I remember being genuinely afraid of my armpit hair.

I began to scrutinize my face in the mirror.

I swallowed and digested my own criticism daily along with vitamins to help my hair grow.

When I began to wear makeup, people associated my name with a new face

And sometimes, I even forgot what I looked like.

 

Sometimes, I see myself.

Without a filter, editing, or makeup, I resemble a common daffodil.

Spit on by the wind, yet maintaining its integrity.

Sometimes I feel like I can’t be loved if I am raw.

I constantly feel inadequate compare to my perfectly made up sister,

Who seems to be respected because of the way she paints her face an inch thick and is camera ready at an instant,

Whereas I trust almost no one to take my picture because nothing I see is refined.

 

Without a filter I occasionally ramble idiotically,

Curse like a sailor,

Am self-deprecating,

And sometimes behave rudely.

Without a filter I hear cacophony in my words and my tongue gets tied,

But I love what I hear when it is read back to me by all the clouds in the sky,

And I love what I see when the other flowers paint a portrait of me in the grass.

 

The only filter on this poem is spell check.

 

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