My Face is Changing

Inside the Parentheses

My face is changing and it makes me think about the kind of older woman I want to be on this day when I remember that I was born and I remember all the older Spanish women I’ve met and have been cared for and by (like the ones in El Corte Ingles, a department store [where, ironically, almost no one speaks English], who sized me for a bra by only looking at me and running their two index fingers along my back to determine the perfect size bra [something I’ve never had] and spent the next hour [all four of them] finding the right style that was also 100% organic cotton, and then there was the one who selected a seat for me on the train when I bought a ticket but mistakenly didn’t buy a seat and who dared the train attendant to make me move) and I feel a tugging at the corners of my hem (like the woman who touched the hem of that famous garment) to come along and be touched by a process that is not regretted or made up of regrets or running from its care or it’s caregivers and I look at the map of my run this morning and realize that I did not meet the intention I set but I was only less than 20 seconds away and the sea welcomes me and gave me a beautiful shell made of my favorite colors and sang a sweet song made of sweet nothings—nothing is such a thing of beauty and I realize (make real) the beauty that is my life in the changing of my face. And I think: How lovely.