If you could wear your emotions on your face, the proportion of your shoulders to your waist, the pitch of your voice, and the range of your exhalations, would you feel more confident in being honest?
Stepping onto the ice with your neutral face, slightly furrowed brows, stale eyes, and an equal sign for a mouth doesn’t embue comfort as much as it does apprehension and possibly subservience.
But if your good morning could shine through your visage, would your opponent be confused? Prematurely reassured, mistaking your joy for excessive whimsy and lack of focus?
Taking the puck towards the net, you suddenly can’t remember if you locked a door or left enough food for your pet, and that beam of light evaporates and ripples into eye sockets bigger than golf balls.
For a minute or two, your skates cross back and forth like cutting paper — you’re unstoppable. Except the rink doesn’t have ice, and your pads have fallen off, and the helmet you strapped tightly around your head has become chalk.
Does worry grow stronger or does it shift into the fodder for architectural nightmares and groans in the pitch-black closets into nowhere?
— yiqi 16 May 2024 9:31 pm
This prose poem was inspired by a “what-if” exercise I’ve done where I imagine my emotional states becoming visible on my face, especially the one that firmly conveys, “go away” or “I’m not here.”
Original pic cred: Fabien TWB (fabienfeub), unsplash
Sitting Pugs: Sports Movies 