Your Face - Brian R Martens

[Lawrence Robinson]

Your Face
 
She spoke the story 
to her fifth-grade class,
as if the story was about another,
friend, neighbor, even a stranger.
 
Words escaped her mouth
filtering through the classroom
entering each pair of attuned ears,
sinking down their small bodies, 
attaching to a shadowy film
below the chest.
 
“Your face is a face only a mother could love,”
he had said.
 
Those words contagious in my throat, 
afflicting my breath from entering
a shocked heart. A crippling comment
that a man could criticize this woman
as a defenseless girl in her youth.
 
Was this story for me, the students, 
the room, walls to absorb?
Even light heard this and paused.
I felt the planet tilt.
 
Maybe, as a young girl,
she had already confronted comparison, 
not shocked as I was. In her seventies, 
telling this story to her class and me,
shared, vulnerable. 
 
The story told more about a foolish man
than her confronting comparison, 
which she brushed off and moved
on without an outward blink. 
 
My mind racing for words, resolution,
as she finished her sharing, the children 
shuffled feet, shifted in chairs,
watched her continue the lesson.
 
One person’s honest speaking, 
years later, without blame, 
acknowledged. Words are 
arrows sent, deflected,
unheard, or buried deep
into a young, undefended heart.
 
I started breathing again as the class 
settled into another subject, sharing 
poetry. What would a young heart gather
when hearing those words?
 
What poem would a young heart reveal,
to honor and heal a wounded heart?
 
 
	- Brian R Martens
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