Mouth Before Face

Aquarium light rinses the room.
A head turns, coin-smooth, gesso-primed,
hair laid back with a river’s patience.
No sockets, no brow—the weather of expression
sanded to a calm.

Only the mouth refuses erasure:
red as a port light, burning through the cool.
From its lower lip descends a tuning fork,
ending in a bead, keeping time
for a heartbeat we can’t hear.

Imagine the workshop: chisels asleep,
an apprentice wiping dust from absence.
Someone forgot to cut a gaze,
or mercy chose otherwise. Still the mouth
is fixed to the face like an emergency flare.

What is speech without a witness?
A doorbell ringing in fog. Yet it persists,
promising to draft the person later—
eyes with verbs, a nose with breath,
cheeks with laughter, a history with heat.

For now the page of skin waits.
That red mouth signs its first initial,
and the bead at silence’s end
hardens to a shining full stop.