The girl in the mirror takes on the twisted shape required to put on earrings — it’s a learned posture: how to do deft work without consideration.
I watch as she decorates herself with the green peridot pair I loved so much and notice the favorite pullover I wore once on a whale trip off the coast of Cape Cod.
The girl is familiar — the eyes mostly, since they are all I choose to look at usually. Those hardly change at all, except when a certain mood hits and they momentarily turn as green as those earrings.
Still, we look at each other sometimes — this girl and I — and we have that kind of silent eye conversation you can only have with people who know you well enough.
Most often it’s a this will have to do rolled-eyes thing she’s perfected. A slight lopsided smirk as if to say…something. I don’t know what.
God, she’s had that lopsided smirk since kindergarten. With a picture to prove it. It seems ironic, sardonic, sarcastic. At five-years-old?
It’s either the smile-smirk of an old soul or a poet, I can’t decide. Reborn or born that way?
But five was a long time ago. Time enough to let smirk lines coexist with laugh lines and that what the fuck indent between her brows.
Has she been perplexed all this time? Since five? Or is circular? Does she come around to understanding now and then? Belief, faith, confidence. Then adrift, nonplussed, confused.
There are days I recognize the all of that. Can see the well-roundedness to her reflections. And days I don’t.
Days I don’t even want to look — use my peripheral senses to pat down the cowlick and add a little color to her cheeks. There, there — a small comfort before we go about our day.
Photo & poem ©2024 Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.
