Steps*

I'm late again, though I'm perfectly made up.

My lids shimmer with Shu Eumura #035, my skin glistens, as it should, having been anointed all morning with expensive oils and fragrances. Brown and blow-dried, my hair curls and carves the air. When I like, I can delude myself into thinking that I am Venus of Willendorf made flesh. My body, all rump and belly, that ripples and breaks over oceans few men have known, I've kept artfully hidden, using stripes and folds and colors to fool the judgemental eye into thinking that most of my excesses have gone elsewhere, as banished as Vogue declares they deserve to be.

Today, as I descend my building's steps to fetch my lunch from my car, I hear the guard tell my boss' driver - ang ganda ng mukha nya. Always, it is my face. To carry my head apart from the rest of me, like Salome did with John the Baptist's, is something I have thought of doing since I was six. For if I am indeed all face, there is no sense in keeping what holds it upright.

It becomes harder to remember what an older man said, years ago, in the reassuring darkness of his room: you are beautiful. Now, as I hold flesh five inches away from what is supposedly my waist, there it is: a lie that should have been the truth.

*Revised.