The Rose

I find myself wondering when it was, exactly, that my brow began to furrow. Like, permanently. I’m certain that some dermatologist or another could get rid of the two angry wrinkles I have over the bridge of my nose.

Because even relaxed, they show.

Just like everything else.

Of course, there is the sickening joy of truth: nobody can hide from the end, not even the rich.

Some are disgusted by what they see out in the media and the world. Others wish for it, for that perfect life and perfect body and perfect face.

That is the terrible, terrible irony that bridges from helplessness to desperation. The desperate get the surgeries and injections and the Botox I should probably have at least considered by now.

But for the rest of us, the helpless, we just die the normal way. We wither and wilt, and someday our turn comes around.

I look down at my hands, at the diamond ring that pops out from the wrinkled skin around it. I remember when I was young, my hands were beautiful; long fingers, perfect nails. I imagined then that I could be a hand model.

My mother always told me that I had excellent legs, just like hers. Even now, pudgy as they are, part of me believes they are just as beautiful as they once were. I got them from her.

But I know I got those two vertical wrinkles between my brows from my father. His face, like mine, was a constant barometer of his dissatisfaction. But now, as that inherited dissatisfaction begins to peel away from my own being, I have a new look on the inside. And while I am left with the outer scar, those deep lines that I know will never go away, I take relief in the knowing that by the time it is my time I will have lived a life full of love and misery, difficulty and joy.

And hope. The most important piece of all.