A Love Letter to Wrinkles, Esperanto Magazine
- Scarlet Thomas
- Aug 16
- 4 min read
For Esperanto Magazine’s Permanence Edition, I wrote A Love Letter to Wrinkles, a short essay about ageing, the body, and the ways we are taught to fear the visible evidence of time.
The prompt immediately interested me. The Permanence Edition asks what it means to preserve something in a world where everything is constantly changing — our relationships, identities, memories and bodies. I wanted to approach that idea through something we are so often encouraged to erase: wrinkles.
Wrinkles arrive gradually. A line beside the mouth, a crease around the eyes, a vein becoming more visible beneath the skin. They are ordinary signs of a body moving through time, yet the beauty industry has built an enormous market around convincing us that they are something to correct. Retinols, injectables and facelifts promise to delay or disguise the inevitable.
I wanted my piece to resist that idea.
A Love Letter to Wrinkles became an ode to the physical traces of having lived. I wrote about crow’s feet gathering around a smile, freckles darkening, skin changing texture and the body quietly recording everything that happens to it. To me, ageing is not evidence of deterioration. It is evidence of survival.
The idea that became particularly important to me was the resemblance between ageing skin and the natural world. Wrinkles can resemble the bark of an old tree; veins in a hand echo the branching veins of a leaf; folds of skin recall the creases of cabbage leaves; lines across the back can resemble a landscape shaped by weather and time. Even buildings crack, weather and sag as they age.
Nothing in nature remains untouched by time. Why should we?
I also created the artwork for the article, photographing a series of ageing bodies alongside photographs of natural textures and forms. I wanted the images to create visual parallels rather than simply illustrate the writing: bark beside wrinkles, leaf veins beside veins in skin, cabbage beside folds of flesh, sky beside the body, freckles beside the markings of the natural world, and crow’s feet beside a smile.
The photographs became a kind of visual collage about repetition. The same patterns appear everywhere, suggesting that ageing is not something that separates us from nature, but something that connects us to it.
Writing and photographing this piece made me think differently about permanence, too. Perhaps permanence does not mean remaining unchanged. Perhaps it exists in the traces we leave behind — the lines on a face, the photographs we take, the memories attached to a body, and the evidence that we were here.
The full article can be read below:
Wrinkles arrive quietly. First as faint lines beside the mouth, then soft creases at the corners of the eyes, gathering slowly like folds pressed into fabric over time. We are taught to fear them, to smooth them away before they fully appear. Entire industries exist to erase the evidence that we have lived. Retinols, face-lifts, injectables — promises of permanence through artificial youth. Yet ageing is not failure. It is proof of survival.
There is something deeply beautiful about a face that has changed with time. Crow's feet deepen through years of laughter. Foreheads crease through worry, concentration, grief, or tender-ness. Skin loosens, freckles darken, and veins become more visible beneath the surface. The body records everything quietly. It keeps a history of living.
Sometimes I think wrinkles resemble landscapes. The bark of a tree splitting and thickening with age. Rivers carving lines through stone. Wilted cabbage leaves folding into themselves at the market. Vines twisting around fences. Even old buildings seem to sag gently under the weight of decades, their surfaces cracked and weathered by sun and rain. Nothing in nature remains untouched by time. Why should we?
To age is to become textured. The body softens around the edges, marked by experience rather than untouched by it. There is an intimacy to this kind of change. I have always loved the way wrinkles gather when someone smiles - how the skin around the eyes folds instinctively before words even arrive. A smile reveals emotion before language does. A body becomes expressive through repetition.
There is also privilege in ageing, though we rarely speak about it this way. Not everybody is granted the chance to grow old. To wrinkle is to have moved through time, carrying memories, relationships, heartbreak, boredom, routines, celebrations, ordinary afternoons. The body transforms because life continues to happen to it.
Perhaps permanence does not exist in remaining unchanged, but in continuing despite change. The body cannot preserve itself forever, just as flowers wilt, fruit bruises, and seasons shift. Yet there is tenderness in this cycle. Wrinkles remind us that we are temporary, but also that we were here at all. Maybe that is why I find them beautiful. They are not imperfections to erase, but evidence of a life lived fully - delicate lines mapping where a person has been, and all they have managed to survive.
Wrinkles remind us that we are temporary but also that we were here at all.
Comments