Ciudad Trujillo, 1950s
I watched as she tried on faces
before an evening out—a charity ball,
a fiesta de cumpleaños, a command
reception in the dictator’s honor—
dabbing, brushing, preparing
her company face to put on display,
the darkened brows, the red mouth
drawn on her mouth, the familiar,
beloved face already slipping away
to belong to the world, turning this
way and that in the three-panelled
vanity mirror, in which I could also
see my face, cupped in my hands,
studying her, touching, retouching,
never satisfied, trying to find a face
to mask the faces that couldn’t
be shown, faces I knew by heart,
gauging her moods, the daily weather
of her expressions, like a bankrupt farmer
watching the rain clouds bank; faces
she brushed over, colored and covered up:
the face of terror at the news of a cousin shot,
an uncle’s body found in a wrecked car;
the punishment face enraged at the will I had,
locking me up in the closet until I sobbed,
promising to be good if she let me out;
the nostril-flaring face of a swallowed laugh
over a joke she couldn’t share with us;
or the playful face of a girl reaching
to hold my hand, skip rope, climb trees,
whispering tales of what would become of us;
or the private face turned inward,
the curtains drawn: I belong to myself alone.
So many faces surfacing on her face.
I wonder now which was her true face,
the one I kept waiting for, the one
that might tell me who she was, I was,
what we were here to do, making,
unmaking, draft after draft,
until we had found the face
we had before we were born,
the face of her absence now,
only memory’s mirror can recall.
This is drawn from “Visitations.”
