No two alike

Look then at the faces and bodies of people you love.
The explicit beauty that comes not from smoothness of skin
or neutrality of expression, but from the web of experience
that has left its mark.

Each face, each body is its own living fossilized, record.
A record of cats, combatants, difficult births;
of accidents, cruelties, blessings.

Reminders of folly, greed, indiscretion, impatience.
A moment of time, of memory, preserved, internalized,
and enshrined within and upon the body.

You need not be told that these records are what render your beloved beautiful.

If God exists, He is there, in the small, cast-off pieces,
rough and random and not two alike.

-- from Broken for You, (2005)by Stephanie Kallos