The great literary tradition of the "retelling."
(The Now Perfect Woman)
It's only a constellation,
an ugly thing. A half dozen
rust-colored spots
marching up and down
her white right cheek.
She invests in it.
She turns her face this way
and that, surveys the stain
in the bathroom mirror,
peers through fog, through
the white density
that can't obscure
her mark.
At dinner
she rests her hand over it,
taps it, draws attention to it.
She dotes on it as though
she might knock it away,
embarrass it
right off of her face. But
it's firm, it stays in place.
It doesn't bend
to the dark or the light, doesn't
age. She presses it,
a kiss.
She marries it, she reclines.
She sinks like a stone.