A face is not just skin and bone. It is a ledger. A quiet archive of what life has given and what it has taken.
Some faces wear softness—the kind that comes with time to rest, with hydration, with facials scheduled weeks in advance. Some faces wear exhaustion, the kind that settles deep, threading fine lines where worry once lived.
The skin tells its own truths. The difference between a serum-induced glow and the sheen of a long shift. Between lips nourished by a luxury balm and lips that crack in the winter cold because drugstore chapstick got lost in the bottom of a purse.
Teeth. Posture. Even the way the brow rests—creased from years of stress or lifted in the ease of knowing things will work out.
Makeup is a mask, but only to a point. Foundation smooths, brightens, blurs. But it cannot erase what the face has learned.
And whether we realize it or not, we read these stories every day.