zeina hashem beck

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zeina hashem beck notes on lipstick

Today, you bought new lipstick. You ate dark chocolate, listened to a friend talk about marriage. You saw a newborn in a stroller & weren’t moved. You’re relieved your children’s legs don’t rest around your hips anymore, that they click their seatbelts into place by themselves. Your older daughter just turned 10 & is learning to send you messages like “Keep Calm & Love Mama.” She imitated your dance moves in the car. This made you feel a little immortal.

The lipstick you bought is called Plum. It smells good. You’re learning to love bolder colors on your lips: red, mauve, fuchsia. You want to go out one day & buy green lipstick. There should be lipstick called “To Go Out One Day & Buy Green Lipstick” or “I Talk About Marriage With My Girlfriends All the Time” or “I Will Party Tonight” or “Because Life Is Too Short.” Except today life felt long

enough for you to go through your old makeup. You gave your daughter the lipsticks she’d broken & told her not to touch the new ones. You threatened, she nodded & smiled at her gift. Life was long enough for you to go out before sunset because you needed tomatoes & the hypnotic light at that time of the day. You only remembered the tomatoes when you opened the fridge & only remembered the beautiful light when you drove through it. The world took slower breaths

& you loved it, the way you love your children with an ache when they’re sleeping, when the quiet makes you long for their voices that you’d silenced in the afternoon. Or the way you whisper to your husband in his sleep that you miss him, ask him to remember the words in the morning, & he doesn’t. You talk about marriage. “Only a piece of paper,” he says, & what he means is, “Don’t be afraid. Us is still here inside all this.” Who remembers anything in the morning daze?

Today you woke up anticipating the hours, smiling in bed like a child excited about a trip to the beach. Surprised, you asked, “What is it, again, that I’m happy about?” Slowly you conjured the house the real estate agent showed you: empty, spacious, full of sun & dust. Perhaps you were moved when you saw the child. Perhaps you’re saying you don’t regret not having the one that had started inside you in December. You took the pills. You bled. You cried. You want an empty uterus, & to dance. You want arms strong enough to lift this weight & the new house. When asked to put “from” in a sentence, your daughter wrote, “I am from my mother.” You’ve decided you are country enough. The night begins. An airplane blinks in the distance. The old & new loves wait at airports, in homes, on street curbs. You will wear your new lipstick. Call it “Look at Us, All Want & Tongue.” Your husband will not stand still for a photo. You will rise when a favorite song comes.

zeina hashem beck

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