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Live Open Mouthed

I no longer delight in the delusion of being right.  The years pile up, yielding wisdom—the kind that I feel deep in my belly. The kind that pries the masks off of all of those faces.

When I was young, I believed in absurd things: the things that deep-belly wisdom debunk. The trick is to juggle the hostile aftertaste of deep-belly wisdom with the honeyed piquancy of open-mouthed laughter without dropping all that is you.

I look at the lines staring back at me in the mirror and I open my mouth and I force the laughter up like bile until it becomes real. Then, my laughter transforms into a growl, a guttural grunt that renders the lines staring back at me in the mirror savagely beautiful.  Finally, I stop tripping over the heap of years and faceless masks: I just live open mouthed.

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