The Face of Another

Who am I?

I look at the face of another to find my answer. I come to this world and find there’s a constitution that binds me, there is an unwritten moral code we all follow and many written scriptures that are sacred. I look in the eyes of my mother. Tears swell in my eyes. It is not certain why I cry. There are many faces, many eyes that born into mine.

I look at the face of another and ask what am I. I look into your eyes. I look into your eyes staring in mine. I find our reflections merging, blurring, fading. They become one. They separate. They intersect. They disintegrate. I long. I yearn. I must melt into the face of another.

We speak. I talk. I hear you. There is an invisible shield between our bodies. I wish you and I, all of us could be in silence. I only wish to be. I wish to be in nothingness. From what I emerged, from what we all emerged. Would it end the separation between our faces?

Only if we were nothingness.

I was only ten when I learnt that color was just an illusion and that clouds were just condensed vapors. I have longed to hold another hand. I wonder if it would turn to paper and sand soon. I fear I will wither away. Yet I long for it ever so often.

God made flesh and bones. He made them warm and real. He made humans. He made us distinct. I separated from my mother’s body. She cried scalding tears as her body tore open. I was born. I came into being. To see the light for the first time, it must have been excruciating. My eyes got accustomed to the light. The light turning into darkness each day, every day. The light in my mother’s eyes and her tears. The pain of birthing another being. I was my mother’s. Yet separate. She looked at me in agony. She loved yet loathed me.

I learnt words and their meanings. I learnt how to speak. And to listen. And to follow. I looked at my face in the mirror. I was told it was me. My reflection staring back into my eyes. I became real. Yet I didn’t. I was seen. I was told by everyone who I was. I was perceived. My eyes perceived my reflection through the eyes of another. I saw myself; distorted, manipulated, disheveled. I did not see myself. But I was seen.

I stumbled upon words and many faces. Each face had a word. Each face morphed and decomposed. Each word lost its meaning. I was separated from my mother’s body. The separation just kept on increasing. I cried scalding tears over my mother’s pain. I longed for another body to hold mine. The world couldn’t contain the face of another.

I found myself staring at strange faces that never got familiar no matter how many times I looked at them. I mistook one for another. I found all merging into my own. Then I forget my own as if it is the face of another.

I remember my mother’s words and her womb before my birth. A chord of existence that never separated us. The pain, the misery, the entrapment. I find myself becoming the face of my mother.