makeup tender_square when a bathroom lacks the necessary counter space for face-primping, alternatives are necessary. sitting cross-legged on the floor and peering into the bottom portion of a full-length mirror will do in a pinch, but it’s uncomfortable. i had planned to take a writing desk and moonlight its surface as a vanity, then changed my mind and sat at the dining room table because of the influx of natural light there. i set up my cheap standing mirror and smear concealer into the contours of years. as black liner hovers above my lash with surgical stillness, i remember mom seated at the kitchen table in her berry housecoat, sipping coffee, her caboodle of cosmetics and tools unburdened, the conair light-up mirror framing her visage. and witnessing the calming process of paint to accentuate before the household turned circus, before i was allowed to join the sorority of maquillage. a text message dissolves the image, the overlay of features, the blending of time; mom asks if i feel like yapping. i tell her no, i’m getting ready and that i’ll see her when i arrive. 221106 ... kerry my mother never taught me how to "do" makeup. i don't know if it was unintentional or because i never showed interest. she did give me her old clinique promotional bags that i still use when i travel. when i was a kid she wore purple and blue eyeshadow and thick black mascara, and now i don't think she wears any. on the first day of seventh grade i wore frosted pink lipstick to school because i thought i was supposed to. i only did that once. the next year my briefly-best-friend stephanie and i went to cvs and bought concealer and triangle sponge applicators, and she taught me how to apply it before we went to the carnival in the school parking lot and shared a funnel cake with sean and i blew the powdered sugar in his face because i thought it was funny but it really wasn't. there was a girl a year younger than me who rode my bus, and she had terrible acne that she tried to cover up but it just looked like pasty blotches and someone should have helped her out but instead we just smirked and pitied her because that's how middle schoolers are. at that time it was considered unattractive to have anything but matte skin so i did wear powder to cover the shine on my t-line. i never learned how to tightline. i never learned how to do a proper cat-eye like abby (or abbie). i never got into the habit of wearing makeup every day because i didn't want that experience of not wearing it one day and having everyone tell me i looked ill. i went through a very brief lipstick phase but could never find the right shade so i gave up. if i get a wild hair or am meeting a new client i might wear some mascara and some of that goop to "tame" my eyebrows but i often forget to take it off at night and someone told me once that mascara makes your lashes fall out (fact? myth? don't know) and it takes forever to remove and it doesn't feel like "me." for a long time i felt like if i wore makeup regularly i'd one day forget what my real face looked like and that would be terrible. and this used to bother me, never being able to "do" makeup, as if it made me less of a "woman," but now i've accepted that that's just how it is and how i am, and maybe i am less than a "woman" than i realized, and i don't even know what a woman really is supposed to be, and it feels so good to finally not care. 221106 ... kerry she told me she doesn't wear it but yesterday sitting in the front window of the french bakery i could see it on her face. it wasn't blended well, not quite the right shade. it made her pores look bigger. i know lately life has not been easy for her. she has been lonely and heartbroken. still i think she's more beautiful when she doesn't try to cover anything up. 230319 what's it to you? who go blather from