The Sea of Faces 

Carved by time’s hands: faces.

Calloused, clumsy hands lithifying,

Or bladed, cruel hands striking,

Or soft, graceful hands nesting.

We can only move forward,

Having been set by time’s myriad hands,

A face is a story

Told in silent film:

Eyes welling light,

Or pleading to be seen,

Or ablaze,

Or burnt-out.

A face is an undiscovered island

Of urgent, vital, ephemeral relationships,

Of uncontrollable, implacable, accumulative conditions,

Of generative, ruthless, irreversible cycles;

Blooming, dying, resurrecting

On its own.

All the faces seem to disappear

Like the stars at dawn...

We are not what we see

Upon the surface of still water.

Invisible, we reach out from dark depths. 

We are so much more 

Than what can be said or seen,

Than what we read

In our faces.

 

A Life in Six Word Memoirs

1. 

 Never lived where I was born.

 

2.

 Hiding behind Mama’s legs; blue-eyed silence.

 

3.

 Loved swimming; always got ear infections.

 

4.

 Wander the world looking for myself.

 

5.

 Can’t stop running at 5AM—why?

 

6.

 Drunk on Saturday, church on Sunday.

 

7.

 A civilian in an Army uniform.

  

8.

Haven’t slept-in in about a decade.

 

9.

Being comfortable takes priority over style. 

 

10.

The past is not the future.

11. 

Perpetually late for funerals—forgive me…

 

12.

Adverse childhood experiences+self-medicating=Kidneys failing.