Receeding at Eighteen.

I stared at myself
Longer than I normally do
In the mirror and light
That reflects lies.
Noted all the lines,
all the marks,
all the disliked features,
Given to me by time.
I particularly noticed
The work that had been done
on the fore of my head
by a force, though the weakest,
strong enough to carve canyons.
But before that
I searched long and hard
for an angle to shift at,
a muscle to tighten,
a thought to inspire
my smile to forget who it came from.
To make the structure of my face
chisel and sculpt
a new, free, independent figure
completely devoid of any resemblances
of the man that is my father.
But before that
I counted the spots on my head
where my scalp peeked through
from my thinning, fading hair
and thought of how many years are left
before I lose my distraction
from the buttery teeth,
from the thick under jaw,
from the uneven nostrils,
from the wrinkled forehead,
from the hand-me-down, spacious smile.
And then after all of that
I stared into my eyes
and one after another
I wondered why
I was crying
When there is a world outside of me
so much larger than I.
I wondered why
does this life have to be
the one that I make it
and why
would I ever choose to make it this way.