Mona Lisa
People have been staring at me for over 500 years, and I’m exhausted. When everyone leaves, I get these four walls to myself. I move and stretch the frozen muscles around my eyes as I trace the edges of the ceiling. After holding them inanimate all day while strangers peer in close, invading my space, I relish the moment the lights go out.
My smile, my Mona Lisa smile, is as enigmatic as the expressions of the women who stare at me from all the world’s crevices. The feminine mystique imposed upon me is shared by the countless faces I see each day. At an indeterminable point where a grimace meets a beam, these women’s smiles are as universally female as expression itself. We can turn our smiles up or down, tweak them right or left, at any given moment with or without indication. It is in those milliseconds preceding an expression when we hold the most power and are most mysterious in the eyes of those who behold us. Just like you, I am a woman caught somewhere in the middle of an expression, waiting to come alive when the lights go out.
