Julia Alvarez

So many faces surfacing on her face.

I wonder now, which was her true face, the one I kept waiting for, the one that might tell me who she was, I was, what we were here to do.

making, unmaking, draft after draft, until we had found the face we had before we were born, the face of her absence now, only memory's mirror can recall.

I think there's, you know, there is that, I wonder now, which comes towards the end, but that the wondering speaker is the one that is putting these things that might have been unknown things

to a child were unknown, except that you sense it the way you sensed everything, and you heard that an uncle was in a car accident, and you saw the tension.

But you didn't know, but this was the backdrop.

And the way the speaker moves so quickly from that face of terror to the punishment face

Onto the nostril flaring face.

I mean, they're all sort of at an equal.

They shouldn't be.

The child, you know, just trying to move through them.

And what was her real face, you know?

Oh, wonderful, to face the truth.

Faces to face the truth.

Right.

I think that child's wondering about it is the poem's wondering, too.

You know, what are these faces that we wear to greet the faces that we meet?

Who are these faces that are part of the face?

And for a child...

I mean, that absorption with the mother, the first person that is, you're looking at almost to know what to know in the world or who to be in the world or what to make in the world.