We don’t fall for beauty

There are songs and poems and stories and movies and sculptures and paintings and photographs on beauty.

Symmetry, pillowy lips, cascades of hair, noses with just the right amount of bridge, ears that clasp the corners of skulls with perfectly curled helices, clavicles and collar bones, all that….yes, yes, ya ya, ok, ok.

But I want to make a case for what you and I truly fall for. And it isn’t exactly beauty.

No. It’s eyebrows that knit and unfurl like clues to inner workings, square jaws on soft faces, cheekbones which hint at family history, nostrils that flare in amusement, hair that has so much personality it ought to have a name of its own, mouths that curve in smiles so rare or so shy, they feel like gifts, eyes that glitter with secret knowledge, creases, lines and wrinkles from cold winds and old pain, laughter caught with a hand before it spills from a mouth, a map of moles, a forehead high and wise, a gravelly morning voice and even that obvious thing – a crinkly-eyed smile.

No it isn’t exactly beauty but it’s some kind of beauty. A knowledge that arrives when you love a person enough to learn their face.