Her eyes blur with what once was;
gray matter tinted with doubt.
She remembers her skin
before her face was lifted,
and the cheek her son kissed
as a toddler in the morning light,
but this rearrangement by age
and scalpel claims a scenario
skewed, old photos just off center
of today’s snap-click, her daughter’s
nose not quite hers anymore—
and the stories she hears,
settling in ears that first knew a few
centimeters of shift when the slack
of neck was stretched up and over—
even this alters the telling
of the yet unfolding; reframes
the refractions of light as she leaves daily
her down-sized apartment
through its unbreakable glass door,
which now shimmers her familiar
reflection alongside such new
strange questions: Is this
the face her children remember
when remembering before?
Or is it the other?
