Her lines had become creases now,

Deep caverns of deeply rooted emotion

Scarring what had once been pristine skin

Each line was a memory,

the painful emotional divorce,

the lost child taken without a chance to fight,

the loss of parents and grandparents that made her

feel like an orphan even in old age

Loneliness across her jowl

Years of unquestioned worry on her brow

The gray hair that fell in deep snowy mountains

when she cut her hair

It was all there

Lost lovers torment

The suicide that never went away

The victimizing and the victim

The deep love, the unrequited crushes

Harsh words that cut her skin

Black memories that became craters

Her eyes sunk low from years of tears

Her smile cultivated but hardly real

Each day longer than the one before

Taking the blood and sweat and turning them

Into pale lips and ghostly skin

She wore it all

Proudly

Without makeup

Her wrinkles were her own

No one could take them

No one could iron them

No one could rearrange them

They told her life’s story