This face, exemplar
of no remorse — its
pale nerve-laced skin
twitching, its stare, 
its thin, sharp nose; 

that fear
in those hollow eyes
brimming over,
spilling onto those lips,
flavoring each word they spill 
with hate
because 
fear becomes hate 
when exposed
to open air,

and once fear
flowers into hate
it cannot easily unbloom
and furl back toward
innocence
from that urgent, ugly
canker-state:

fear
turned to hate dares 
not regret anything
as doing so may expose
how little it ever had to fear
from the beginning — hence

this face, exemplar
of no remorse with unrelenting
stare, almost as if a mirror
were before you unblinking,
but that isn’t your face
in the news — 

it’s something
at once more unsettled
and unsettling:
a face that could be
any face, a face grown
so commonplace
you almost don’t give it
a second glance.