When will it be my turn?
I've waited long enough!
The mirror still shows
A completely false image. . . .

Not me! It's never me that I see
In the preternatural darkness
Behind my staring, lost eyes.
The tears have clouded my vision
For so long; I'm almost blind.

I laugh & smile inanely
To hide the empty truth
from others . . .
So they will never know the real me,
Nor how much pain I live in.

When the rain comes,
I wish it would dissolve me
Forever into nothingness,
Because my pain is a heavy load,
Too enormous & monstrous to bear.

Can someone spare a cloak
To hide my shame within?
Blood oozes out of my wounds
Which are invisible to everyone,
But never to my sorrowful eyes.

The blood that I lie in
Is a congealing black color . . .
And I'm so thin & despairing
That the wind would blow me away,
Like smoke from a distant fire.

Look into the cauldron's flames
And pretend I was never there!
My existence was a fabrication,
Just an elaborate joke
For everyone's morbid laughter.

The world continues to revolve
On its unerring axis for all eternity --
Until something freezes its motion,
And everything falls apart
drastically. . . .

I won't be remembered or mourned!
I never existed except
For bloody, dismal reflections
In a long forgotten mirror
In the lost labyrinths of time. . . .

I want the certainty to prevail!
The world would shudder
If it knew who I really was,
And what I honestly looked like.

The image blazing through
The luminous mirror would
change radically!
The entire realm would be spellbound
By what it saw through the portal,
And would finally understand!

My effigy wouldn't be clothed
In a sequined, black dress,
For a long night of drinking
and dancing
Under the brilliant midnight stars!

I would be sporting
an ebony sequined tuxedo
With a forest green undershirt,
And my partner wouldn't be a girl . . .
But another exquisite man
Standing always by my side . . .
And the nightly festivities
would never end!



© Kris Bailey.
5-13-23.