Being Beautiful

She was looking adoringly around at the world, but maybe that was just the shape of her face. Her mouth was a little rosebud and her eyes were seductively retro black pearls drawn onto porcelain. She posed in clean grace, holding onto every chance at elevating our experience of what a human can be.

And beneath her lips, hidden in skin-colored makeup, I could see why she'd been to the dermatologist. She looked at me in sad self-awareness. You must know about this problem, she thought she could ask me.

My skin is uncomfortably dry, I offered in sympathy.

She suggested lightheartedly that I visit her doctor but there was a weight in her expression. A soft pain.

She knew how to close her eyes, throw her head back and laugh in order to keep us gently spellbound, but I couldn't see the kid in her. She was full, instead, of the empty idle smoke of a woman who has never been pressed to consider what she is besides beautiful.