Face Features

By:  Sierra

 

It's hard to describe a face. No matter what a self-assured English teacher or artist says, it is. Of course there's the easy way by slowly, ever so slowly, describing the features one by one and then easing up to describing their perfection in a brilliant flash of light. You could take the lips, for example, and describe how full and lustrous they are. You could say how perfectly rounded they are, and then top if off by saying how pouty and incredibly sensual they are. However, all of these are just words.

 

Those lips are never quite brought to their full potential unless they are experienced, like a song. You can hear from hundreds upon thousands of people how beautiful, touching, and mind-blowing one simple song is. But it isn't until that one moment when you experience it- the surge of the chords and the lifting of the vocals- that you realize quite what they mean. It's that one simple moment when you simply close your eyes and lift them skyward into your soul and feel your heart rise and rise higher and higher.

 

Yes, maybe you've experienced it too. It's that one moment when everything and anything wrong slips away into space and everything ever doubted becomes real. Your mind reels and even the darkest and most secret ridden part of your heart is dusted off in one huge whirlwind of air. The air- so clean and cold and refreshing- blows across it like an endless expanse and tears down every charred black tree and rips across every singed black flower that withered and died from a lack of inspiration. It seems to sweep this all away and leaves only pure whiteness, and pure calmness, like a blanket of newly fallen snow. Put shortly, it leaves you with hope.

 

Synonyms and adjectives and metaphors still do those lips no justice. I could drop a thousand and one of each of these to you, and sit down with you over a pot of coffee throughout the night, trying to paint the picture of my emotions to you, and no justice would be done. It's simply impossible to describe the feeling of those lips dotting upon my skin, for how can the emotion be muttered in syllables or wrapped up in a neat bundle of dark black words upon a white page? I could be the most talented writer in the world, and invent poetic phrases for your choosing. You would nod your head, applaud my speech, and believe you know what I've experienced. The truth is though, you wouldn't have the slightest clue. You wouldn't even have the light touch of a moonbeam through a window.

 

Moonbeams don't have a touch, you say? Oh, I say they do. But, once again, I could never describe it to you. You have to feel it. You have to touch it and know it, and experience the emotion until you jump up and gasp for air and stare back at me wide-eyed, finally understanding my lack of words, and at the same time my overflowing amount of them. Until you stammer and grip the chair beneath you, completely lost and also completely found after experiencing those lips, you will never understand my words, and you will never understand them.

 

I want to save them, though. I want to have others understand them and everything they stand for with all my might, just like those eyes.

 

If the lips were hard to describe, with so many unspoken emotions felt and suddenly comprehended on their soft surface, those eyes held all the mysteries of the heavens. To describe their green essence and pure clarity would once again be taking the easy way out. They are only words, and can easily be thumbed through for in a pocket thesaurus. With my fingers red and my voice sore, I could pour out ten thousand other words and phrases, and you would still be none the wiser.

 

The closest I can come is to a painter and his simple canvas. He brushes furiously, feeling the color and emotions so deeply that it feels as if his very soul is being dipped into and smoothed onto a surface. And yet, the viewer looks upon it and only feels the shallowest surge of his emotion. The emotion is there for the viewer, so pure and deep, but what the artist feels does not compare a thousand times over.

 

Those eyes held such a depth as that. Colors burst and dripped down all around my world as I would look into them. The entire spectrum of colors was turned up a couple notches into a brilliant display and splash of light. They simply looked into mine and caught my life up in one instant and being, as if they were reaching out and catching a very small and singular snowflake.

 

But why am I telling you this? I've already told you the words are useless. To feel them- to actually feel the features of a face for the emotions that that truly are- is the only way to understand them.

 

No, I don't need a chair. I can take the emotions as they flood upon me. I only wish you could feel his emotions. I only wish everyone who ever loved could feel them. I wish I could give justice to those features in some other way. I wish I could allow you to take a step into my head to actually feel those lips and eyes, which traced so lightly over mine, melted so easily into mine, sent such emotion into mine…

 

No, I said I didn't need a chair. I can lean over here, if you will as well. Yes, on this. It's not that expensive, so don't worry. He didn't want anything too fancy. Just smooth light wood… smooth and a little light, like those lips…

 

Just look at him, for me. See the lips? See how easy it would be to praise them with syllables and utterances and printed words? But can you also see how senseless that could be? I once felt those pressed against mine. I once felt them and their fireworks. I was once blown away by their simple being and existence.

 

How could they just remain still like this, though? An emotion like lips weren't meant to lie still like that. They were meant to speak the feelings that couldn't be spoken. Now, no one will ever know those lips again.

 

hey are lost. They are lost, and will never be seen again, even though countless people and strangers have bent over them today, crying wet and warm tears upon them. Those countless others lingered and shook and wept over them, but what they saw weren't lips. Their very essence was swept away and is lost forever.

 

Yes, you can now hold my hand steady. Maybe you can stop it from shaking. I'm not quite sure why I'm having such a hard time standing today, but maybe you should hold your hand on my shoulder as well.

 

That feels better. Maybe I just didn't get enough sleep last night. That must be it- I'm just overtired. Here, lean over with me again and look down. Look down at his eyes, so perfectly hidden now forever in the shrouds of time. They are so just so perfectly hidden beneath those webs of lashes and lids of white memories. It's better this way that those features that held so many mysteries are now covered for all time. If you were to look at them, they simply wouldn't be there.

 

The green would remain, with the beauty of a color unmatched by any other, but the color would be flat and deceive you. You would think you were actually looking down at features called eyes, but I know the truth. His eyes disappeared with the emotion that flowed in them, and now, they as well are lost for all time, since their feeling can not be expressed by looking into an english teacher's book or an artist's canvas.

 

Take my word and take my hand a bit harder. The room feels so uneasy, and ready to collapse beneath my feet. Those emotions and those features of his will never be experienced again, and were simply washed away before they should have in a wild whirlpool spiraling downward… downward…

 

Downward, downward, downward my entire body falls now as well, crashing to the ground. Perhaps your hand wasn't strong enough to hold me up, or perhaps the weight of him in front of me for those brief seconds fell too hard upon me.

 

Shaking and shivering, you look up me wild-eyed , grasping my heaving shoulders. "Don't cry, Josh," you cry as well, your own emotions welling up inside of you.

 

Crying? I'm not crying. I couldn't be. Crying is part of an emotion, and emotions disappeared with the features of his face. They simply slipped away, a ghostly shadow in the wind. So you see, I couldn't be feeling an emotion, since they were lost to me. Just as they were lost to me, the descriptions of how he felt and how he loved was lost to the world, since I am his emotions' only living successor. With no one to share them with, what are they worth? They are gone.

 

Yes, it's hard to describe a face. I could work my way up from the perfect curve of the chin to the brow that was dappled by tousled soft blond hair.

But those are only words, words, words.

 

Tear is a word too, and as another of mine splashes onto your outstretched hand, I know this tear holds no emotion beneath the surface. No more new emotions exist for me except his old ones, replaying like a dusted off old film in my mind. No new sensations exist for me except the old soft touch of his hand and his body. So this word, this tear, could not be real. Do you see? Without any emotions except his in my being, and with his own emotions dissipated from his body as well, everything in my soul is telling me now that I too, am dead and gone.

 

Chris… Can you please take my hand even harder now? Please take it and brush away this warm water that insists on splashing down my face, for I don't have the strength to anymore.

 

The End

 

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