It is evolution as I sit with pen in hand recalling my beginnings in school, learning the alphabet and how each letter sounded separately and then together and then taking a book in my hand and learning to read as I said out loud the words together to make sentences and discovered complete thoughts where now I’ve taken the beginnings and molded my own structures to form stories that are excavated from layers below the cracked surface drawing upon that lonely day in class sitting on a tiny wood chair looking upward, eyes meeting their lids, following the wooden stick from letter to letter, sound to sound, from one blackboard to another.

My eyes were clear and transparent and at times changing from moss green to bright yellow-green much like the color of a young leaf when the sun hits it right, penetrating the flesh. No lines around my eyes, just the youthful flow of bright inquisitiveness. Apple cheeks then, drawn looser now with varying degrees of skin color. A smile energetic and wide, reaching to the eyes, transforms the face as it talks. The smile is now limited to its maturing for the eyes speak differently and separately from the smile. A split face torn apart and aged with years, fine lines of milestones following along in an evolution of one’s mirror to the soul.