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June 25, 2026

All Day

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It’s so dry here, I want to press my face into a bowl of yogurt. What good is it to say unless you do it. I am not going to do it. All day, the problem of disappointing someone I love. In Paris in a youth hostel once I watched a Dutch tourist rub a pat of butter into her face at the breakfast table. More than thirty years ago, the wax-paper topper discarded and glossy on the tray. My face now taut and hot. My mother didn’t teach us makeup or exfoliation or the feminine wiles, which was a phrase. “The”! Our faces unimpeded in their loosening and withering. Long ago, this ceased to be her fault. I press a chilly tea bag under my eyes, first left, then right. Chamomile, though I don’t know if any type of tea leaf soothes or doesn’t, really. You don’t need your eyes for looking backwards. Still, I want them cool, unwincing no matter what the air has up its sleeve. It’s so easy to mistake the air for nothing, since what it holds (particles, irritants) is usually impossible to see. Like hubris, and like caution, too—co-sponsors of tanked promise. Or like that Paris memory, pats of butter in a sweating steel container; two sisters squeezing lemons in each other’s hair.

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Sally Ball is the author, most recently, of Hold Sway.

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Magazine, Poetry, July-August 2026

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