Based on “Face Poem,” by Doreanne Laux
Your face
Your mismatched Picasso face, one eye bigger than the other face
Your slanted, uphill teeth face, too bright, too white on top, glowing smile face
Your freckled, sprinkled face with the constellation nose that shines like a light bulb
Your steel wool nose hair, cavernous nostrils that take after your grandmother
Your not sexy, increasingly wrinkled, shriveled-mouth face, like an apricot, sweet but grooved with dryness and age
Your tear-stained, mud slide face where traces show but are covered up with caked-on “I am strong”
Your blue-eyed face, your source of pride and self-confidence face, like a child whose mother praised them for doing something good
Or the puppy dog eyed face when you say, “Good Dog.”