Makeup

We were afraid to jinx it, so when my daughter emerged

from her dark bedroom for the first time in what felt like months

and came to the table with her soft face caked in cosmetics,

we all stilled our gazes, made certain not to react,

except for her youngest sister, who’d been scarfing

a breakfast burrito, but now gasped then grimaced

and gestured with a burrito-holding hand toward desperate

layers of foundation, liquid cat-eye already cracking,

and my daughter’s face, hovering over her empty chair,

started to crumple until she stopped herself and instead

closed her eyes, then gently and with a focused intensity,

ran her fingertips across one overly contour-powdered cheekbone

and then the other, the way an astronaut, before releasing herself

from the confining safety of a pressurized airlock, must check

the seals on her unwieldy but necessary-for-survival space suit.