the girl who lost her face

She had a lovely face. She would wear it all over town, and most who saw it were moved to smile or at least to look away disinterestedly. She wore it well, her face. It’s curves and smiles, it’s eyes and forehead were all in their appropriate places- she wore it well.

She had a particular look she was trying out. It was a faraway, pleased but mysterious look. It carried a sense of whimsy around the mouth and that of a thinly veiled secret hovering just above her brow.

She was getting better at it. She did it more and more. She would look at herself and think “that is it. That is my face. I can see it now”. She made the faraway pleased but mysterious look all the time.

Then one ordinary day, she woke up and something was different.

Her face was gone.

She moved around her house like one dead. She could not eat, she could not see; she had no face.

In the street people didn’t look at her at all. They didn’t understand what she had lost. She took to sitting by her window, and to feeling the soft breeze on her shoulders. She would have cried, but she didn’t know how.

She moved towards mirrors and would run her fingers juddering down the glass, trying to remember what her face would do: the way her lips would pull to one side, or a slight crease in her brow.

“Damn” she thought as she strained to recall the face she had loved,

“I thought that was the one.”

 

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