Each morning she visits, hair bedraggled by another restless night. For her, sleep is rarely attainable until an hour’s spinning has transfigured once-smooth bed linen into a tightly mummifying coil around her slender form.
One by one she applies various cosmetics, tenderly crafting a face for the world. I’m privileged to watch this sculptress mid-masterpiece, as the natural vulnerabilities of her countenance harden into something more businesslike. She’s careful to erase the scars of time’s passage which I view all too clearly.
I long to call out assurances that none of it's necessary, that she’s naturally beautiful regardless, but instead I find myself copying her actions. If a little make-up makes us happy, who am I to argue? All the same, I sometimes wonder if today’s antidote isn’t tomorrow’s poison.
Lastly she drapes a butterfly-shaped pendant around her neck. She likes butterflies. She admires the eye-catching pattern, the unpredictable flight path, the careless hop from flower to flower, but most of all she admires the metamorphosis.
Our eyes meet one last time, in wordless understanding. She’ll return briefly this evening, but by then those features have long since settled into comfortable artifice for another day. How I envy her freedom of movement, while I can only echo it from this plate of glass.
