In my parents’ bathroom cabinet a row of lipsticks. All minute shades of brownish rose,
all eroded with her lips’ long absence. Today one could open the mirrored cabinet, the
invisible line marking His from Hers, and those lipsticks would still be there. The remains
of my father’s favorite saint, her altar of powder and Vaseline and tweezers. The memory
of her physical presence, standing there, making herself up. I’ve got to put my face on,
she would say. Her eyes were fading, she had to use the lighted make-up mirror that
remains inside the cabinet. No better relics for my mother than cosmetics, my mother
who made up her face with such religious devotion, a ritual I watched and then was
taught to repeat from an early age.

Wiederholen Sie
My mother my mirror

A lock of hair
A piece of bone