While Contemplating the Age-Defying

By Allison Albino

face mask at the Korean beauty store,

my father tells me my profile
is becoming more like my mother’s,

a profile I haven’t seen since I turned
twenty-two, when my face was my own

and I would wear high-heeled boots
to the grocery store because that felt good.

I look down at my feet in Rockport sandals,
the chipped, red nail polish, chunky calves,

dry skin and see, Oh god, it’s my mother.
Even as my hands type this, the summer

humidity has puffed up my fingers
to sausage links. My wedding ring

tightens and I see, Oh god, it’s my mother.
Sometimes, I only want a child

to see how the dead can grow
into a new skin, if through their eyes,

a past generation can look though,
a flashlight switched on at dark, 

aimed at the horizon, the endless
beam that doesn’t run out, past

the boats, over the whales’ backs.
I burgundy my lips a revelatory color

roll them together ––
Now I can leave the house. This ritual

inherited. The lipsticks in every
purse, pocket, coat.

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Allison Albino is a Filipina-American poet and French teacher who lives and writes in Harlem. Her work has either appeared or is forthcoming with The Rumpus, The Lantern Review, Pigeon Pages, Poetry Northwest, The Oxford Review of Books, The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Common and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from The Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, The Fine Arts Work Center and Tin House. She studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and has an M.A. in French literature from NYU. She teaches at The Dalton School in New York City.