One Face in Charcoal


On cave walls marked by ash and ancient fire

My face emerged before the birth of words

A shadow learned to stand against the dark.


Hands shook as charcoal traced a living form

No name was known, no future yet conceived

The face existed only to endure.


The firelight bent my features into time

Each flicker changed the meaning of the face

The wall became the first remembered mind.


From stone to clay my face began to harden

It wore the weight of gods and mortal kings

Belief engraved its power in the brow.


Gold crowned the eyes, and laws shaped silent lips

The face learned how to command and rule

It spoke for nations, never for itself.


Paint taught the face to pause inside a frame

History asked it not to breathe or change

Stillness became the proof that it was real.


One day the glass returned my gaze to me

The face turned inward, startled by its form

For once it asked what truth it truly held.


No god looked back, no crown, no borrowed role

Only a self unguarded by design

The face began to fracture into thought.


Doubt carved new lines more deeply than time did

The eyes grew heavy with unsolved questions

Identity became a fragile skin.


The camera seized the face and froze its breath

The moving image taught the face to act

Expression learned to lie with perfect ease.


Screens multiplied my image endlessly

Each version wore a different borrowed mood

The face became a tool of constant change.


One smile sold joy, another masked despair

The face was edited to earn belief

Truth blurred beneath the pressure to be seen.


Yet underneath the light of modern glare

The ancient shadow waits without a voice

Unfiltered, rough, and patient as before.


Inside the mind a cave still holds its wall

And there the charcoal face remains unchanged

It watches silently across all time.


Though tools evolve and centuries collapse

The face endures as record and as wound

The oldest poem humans never end.

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