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If You Change Your Nose H LEYLA MOMENY What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us. —HERMAN HESSE, DEMIAN if you change your nose, you change your destiny my mother’s changed hers twice my sister, once I am quietly planning an escape pacing outside of her bedroom like a child, where politics prevent me from entering, where purple dust clouds land on what was once a human face slouching under her doorway with legs entwined azaleas one fist raised against this oriental plague I am fetching ice water IFYOU CHANGEYOUR NOSE 161 magazines yogurt I am trying to be supportive I am trying not to judge I record phone messages create excuses readjust mirrors and segregate piles of secondary laundry the machete hanging on the kitchen wall displays my mother’s initials and a recipe for miss clairol’s summer of ’ solarium blond but I prefer the beauty of Ugliness, and in between the post-surgery and celebration, I rush back and forth from these two, three, or four worlds I have my life planned and if you look closely at my fingertips, you may see that it doesn’t involve dismemberment 162 LEYLA MOMENY ...

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