A procession of manners along my cheek,
marking me, moulding my condition.
Awkwardness; sullen ignorance; belief,
built strangely on an emptiness,
bouldered, stalling. I stay here,
silent, break my head on nothing -
imagination, spent coins and sadness.
Lolling slowly down stairways, step badly,
trip and stumble, fall; fade;
forget.
My features hold a history -
I can't remember half of it, but study
in my jawline, brow, and so on,
how the world was once, outside me.
Landscapes, differing in season, texture,
boundaries across my passage,
graded, and the surface mottled.
I continue. I am tacit, terse,
I travel and converse in gesture,
calling for correction with a smile.