She wore her vanity upon her head like a crown of thorns. It pained her, she said, to have men carelessly throw their eyes on her and selfishly leave them there. It pained us more to only be able to look. Her suffering was not dealt by the helpless stares and bashful smiles, but by the monotonous blows of the morning regime. The face poured out of 3 bottles, the lips she mixed like a chemist and painted on. For an hour each morning, she’d separate her lashes with the tip of a sewing needle—lash by lash, alone, alone.

(Part of a slightly longer blog, here: http://wattsthemighty.tumblr.com/)