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Bell’s Palsy

The onset is sudden, like a sneeze. Numbness, then the inability to move. All tension and muscle tone fail and the structure of the face is compromised– as if the right side is sliding off the skull and into a
garden near my feet.

My uncloseable eye swallows the sun , the dust and the world without warrant and in portions humans weren’t designed for.

Simply stated, the eye is choking on what it receives . Therefore, tears pulse as consistently as the heart beats. The only gag reflex it has is to cry.

I tell my husband, “I wasn’t designed for this. I wasn’t designed for any of this.”


Predictably, he kisses me on the cheek, makes a joke about my two faces, tells me it’ll all be okay.

Laughing with him, I notice how my left face smiles and winks like a kid on a carousel – eating cotton candy for the first time.


Simultaneously, I notice how my right face cries, frowns, and ages me well beyond my years.

But maybe this dichotomy existed all along– and it just took the affliction to bring it to the surface.

Maybe the two sides of my face are twins , each with their own backstory. Maybe one grew up on a farm with her biological parents. Maybe the other grew up elsewhere, in an unnamed land that can only be felt in the bones.