FACES

I have worn out more faces than most people see.
Mine keep coming
one right after another, they come.
I try them on, adjust my sight and go out-
out into the world
and learn to see all over again,

As if it were my very first time.

I’m learning to look at myself
in the face of the eyes around me.

Then,
After a while;
A day, a week, a month,
or a marriage;
My face will wear down and fall off.

It is then that I go inwards.
I don’t know how or what happens there,
but to find the next face.

I always feel that the one I wear is the only,
The last,
The true me.
To express that inward place,
(where I don’t know what happens)

and I’ll go there again

by tebbe davis

The Calling

The instant
the young co-ed
placed the wet
tip
of the paint brush
to a faint piece
of cardboard in the
ill-lit
basement space,
which she called
home, her life
changed
in a way none
could imagine
at the time.

by tebbe davis