Cosmetology
/Chase Dimock
It began when her arthritis struck a match beneath her knuckle
and her husband unscrewed her nail polish cap. Soon her
doddering hand could no longer land the brush on her nails.
So he learned to paint smooth candy apple red strokes
blowing gently to her tickled delight.
When she grew too ill to make her salon appointments
he researched perm techniques in her old stack of Cosmos.
Practiced first with one curler on the wisps of his combover.
When she could no longer see the difference
between chenille and chiffon, he learned to match
patterns and textures, scarves with handbags that sat
empty at bedside.
He searched his nude body for a patch of skin that matched
the pallor of her complexion, sketched basic blends of makeup
before he dared touch her flesh canvas. Soon he painted
their wedding day on her face, framing the cataracts
with a light smoky eye, rouging the warmth of a smile
into her lost expression.
When she expired in her hospital bed the doctors,
children, and grandchildren left him alone in the white room.
He fixed the oxygen mask’s smear on her lipstick, pressed
hard enough to transfer the crimson to his lips.
Through the wake and interment, he left the trace of red
on his mouth. When the family left his home he gazed
at the waning print of her smile in the mirror. He grabbed
the lipstick from his pocket, and filled in her ruby kiss,
hooked her locket around his neck, dipped a finger
in her Maybelline compact and tentatively smeared
the powdered pink on his cheeks
As he rubbed it in, her glow radiated from the mirror
he applied the eye shadow, raised the mascara wand.
Her face came slowly into focus until he disappeared.
This poem was inspired by watching my grandmother instruct my grandfather on how to apply an acrylic fingernail to his index finger. My grandfather is a brilliant scientist and engineer, but he never much cared about fashion, so it was fascinating to watch him learn this beauty technique on his own finger. I learned later that fake nails can be used to heal a split nail like a cast. This scene of care and love between two people who have been married for over 60 years made me think about other scenarios in which a man like my grandfather would suddenly want to learn cosmetology skills. Although the poem is fiction, and the characters are not my grandparents in real life, the devotion and respect they show for each other, still in love with each other's intellect and soul after six decades, is what drove the narrative in the poem. The rest is about melancholia and how mourning someone changes who we are, or perhaps makes us more aware of who we have always been.
Chase Dimock teaches at College of the Canyons and lives in Los Angeles. He serves as the Managing Editor of As It Ought To Be Magazine. His poetry has been published in Waccamaw, Hot Metal Bridge, Faultline, Saw Palm, New Mexico Review, and Flyway among others. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois and his scholarship in World Literature and LGBT Studies has appeared in College Literature, Western American Literature, Modern American Poetry, The Lambda Literary Review, and several edited anthologies.
