The port side of her chin has got a crease
as if impressed by linen on her skin,
but it’s instead a mark of years, a piece
of lost elastic collagen within.
And yet that visage hosts a blemish too:
a pimple on her nose that’s hardly fair,
as if at 44, she’s going through
a teenage episode of skin despair.

So she massages, lathers, rubs and creams
a face that aging dryly sculpts in rows,
resisting scalpel, needle, all extremes –
for she who wasn’t pretty younger knows
that openness, receptiveness and laughs
will suit her more than toxic shots or grafts.