I would consider this a good draft, good start Laura. Love the opening, especially loathing at first sight, and later: by the author of compromise we call maturity. Stranger things do indeed happen. :o)

After giving this another couple of reads, I found it has grown on even more. I like the title. The interesting thing though is that it almost sounds like you're talking about an inanimate object like a house or work of art as opposed to another person.

Yes, face to face, but who is the desired one and who is unwanted? Who is to determine? The question is impregnant with the answer. The one who is raising a question is the one who is seeking an answer.

Indeed this reads like a moment’s analysis of the self, beginning with a sudden and coincidental meeting of the eyes and moving to recognition, then to judgment and scrutiny, and finally ending in a reconciliation of those deconstructed features, seemingly reconstructing them. “As I applied the final touches in restoring her weathered façade I felt a glow of empathy opening my heart…rekindling the embers of intimacy we shared in dreams beyond memory” – is it possible to reconstruct our ‘other’ face, to make it reflect the one face we want to become? Or must there be a decisive cut without the possibility of a merge, for there is always ONE who can BE, and not two? What is shared by two faces “in dreams beyond memory” but the essence of ONE Being recognized…thus, there still remains but One. As Ashok says, the question is impregnant with the answer. As always Laura, your reflections are hefty foods for thought, and though I may have been redundant and perhaps mistaken as to the self-analytical perspective of this piece, nonetheless I saw my own struggle between the lines which reflect yours.

We see ourselves in the reflections of mirrors or other people's eyes. Too often our character is revealed by what we project of ourselves into the reflection we view. This is beautiful and haunting.