by Debbie Kerr

Created on: May 30, 2008

Deep down, beneath years
of dress-up clothes and masks
applied with careful precision -
a little girl hides,
cowering from fears
she avoids at all costs -
molten tears running
like the River Styx
on a journey from
nowhere to no place,
an ever flowing stream
flooding the unconscious
steadily filling a reservoir
long dormant - creeping
like a furtive stranger
imperceptively to the very edge -
and suddenly, it seems,
the surface cracks . . .
a shining facsimile
of healthy serenity
dissolves into a muling,
whining creature none
care to see - caught
face to face with an alien
being behind clothes familiar,
they cautiously smile,
a futile gesture of sympathy
and turn away,
embarrassed by the deception,
bewildered by the lie,
not understanding that the face
was only a mask -
an illusion recognized.

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