I Have Had to Learn to Live With My Face

Lyrics

You see me alone tonight. My face has betrayed me again, the garage mechanic who promises to fix my car and never does. My face that my friends tell me is so full of character; my face I have hated for so many years; my face I have made an angry contract to live with though no one could love it; my face that I wish you would bruise and batter and destroy, napalm it, throw acid on it, so that I might have another or be rid of it at last. I drag peacock feather behind me to erase thе trail of the moon. Those tears I shеd for myself, sometimes in anger. There is no pretense in my life. The man who lives with me must see something beautiful, like a dark snake coming out of my mouth, or love the tapestry of my actions, my life/this body, this face, they have nothing to offer but angry insistence, their presence. I hate them, want my life to be more. Hate their shadow on even my words. I sell my soul for good plumbing and hot water, I tell everyone; and my face is soft, opal, a feathering of snow against the cold black leather coat which is night. You, night, my face against the chilly expanse of your back. Learning to live with what you're born with is the process, the involvement, the making of a life. And I have not learned happily to live with my face, that Diane which always looks better on film than in life. I sternly accept this plain face, and hate every moment of that sternness.