since the accident of his birth

since the accident of his birth / thaw / the features of his face had always borne the marks of that suspended animation / visibly this amounted to a frozen lifeless quality in the skin / no matter how his expression had taken on the appearance of liveliness and pleasure / the skin itself had remained distasteful / no matter how sweet the expression / in this way the possession of personal beauty was denied him / never at any point after the awareness of this thing never to be had he approved for his skin / which is not to imply that he actively disapproved / far from it / had it not been for this flaw he would have been sufficiently satisfied with that which scrutinised him from the shard of mirror / it was not really beauty that he felt he had been denied / rather a quality of feeling perhaps best described as cherishableness / never was he to look upon his face as lovable / by himself / or by anyone else / so it was that he never expected to be loved visually / and in that for him lay the shame of life / could never expect to be desired by others eyes / nor value any scraps of eye-desire that glanced his way / this was not to be regarded as the fault of the mirror / far from it / indeed he was grateful to the glass for its unfortunate information / better to know than not to know / he reasoned / it certainly explains why they calls me Fishface