COVID

I often see several smiles being suppressed under a fabric that connects around the ears of its owner. It has made me realize how much smiles can mean. There are people I have met with just eyes, the rest of their facial expressions a guessing game. Men can no longer tell women to smile more and maybe that’s a win for feminism. I see just half faces. I forgot what teeth look like and often wonder if teeth whitening sales have gone down. It’s like having a secret, I may only ever know your eyes and the way they crinkle around the curved rim of a mask when you laugh or how they dart back and forth when I can’t keep your attention. I’ll tell my children one day, maybe that when I met their father in the good old Walmart we were six feet apart and I saw nothing but his eyes. I knew he was human by the way he stared at me peeping over the wired rimmed cloth, what romance. I see people budging in store lines, not saying please and thank you. I wonder if it’s because we are just eyes, there is no frown to be seen, no disappointment just a furrow of a brow, eyes turned to slits of anger. Some of the eyes have names that I can’t remember because there is no whole picture, no cheekbones, freckles that dance on top of those cheekbones or smile lines to be seen, to prove to me that they have captured joy. There’s a saying I heard once that goes: “you can tell a lot by someone’s eyes”. I wonder if the author of this saying covered up literally half of all the faces of everyone they met to discover this or if they were just disregarding how well someone’s smile can compliment the light in their eyes. Does anyone even bothers to smile in the first place anymore? If no one can see flashes of teeth or lips turned upward why bother? I feel muffled, suppressed and when I remove this thin piece of fabric from my ears, releasing my mouth from its cage it feels a lot like taking off a bra or slipping out of a pair of boots after a long days work. This very fabric, this muzzle if you will, made to protect me has distanced me from the rest of the world as if to say “careful she bites”. The thin piece of fabric is good for hiding my lip singing in the grocery store and keeping my nose from getting frostbite. However it’s a constant reminder of death and the need to be protected in a world that rarely offers none. There’s no smiles here anymore. People are losing their lives and we are gripping our wired fabric like a life preserver. I never thought I would live in a world where we all wear masks in more ways than one.