Painted Skin

Location

My garbled news congests online highways.

crashes with people I never see,

contact through fragmented ideas

and a thoughtless day’s details.

it’s almost like we’re there together

but then again it’s not like that at all.

I type a sad reminder

As breathy blunders crawl around me.

Buried heads show themselves,

kept safe in sludge.

And when I’m at my computer buzzing

A cotton headed reef hangs over me.

 

I stare at the screen telling me who I am.

My profile picture shows me at a party

I am obscured in photograph,

face slumped in shadows

while my nose bleeds yellow from the light of a lamp.

Body tarnished with dashing colors

Scared blues flicker on my eyelids

They smudge my serious glimpse.

It’s late here, the party has caught my glow.

I look like an orchid, strange and beautiful and like someone else.

someone might only know this orchid

they might think it’s me.

 

But this is the fallen logo of a woman.

Milk mashed face poured onto a screen

Humming a song of electric nothing.

Is this what they all want to see?

Maybe you, maybe you

I know you could love me through this mesh.

I thought maybe you might like me this way

static and soundless,

but I always look good.

there are places where I always look the same.

My proof to the world

is this softly woven image

it carries bruised memories,

Tangles them together,

but I am more than these images show, I am less.

 

I am sitting here real,

the internet disguises shyness so well.

My damp worried skin

Wrinkled fingers, broken clothes, all of it

Sturdy without self sifting.

My hair like polluted water.

I wake up with bugs,

Fall asleep with blood stained sheets,

Dream of wild things,

Dance with girls I shouldn’t touch.

they say only my bones make an impression.

I’m not the swan I portray.

I am dirty.

I stand up crooked.

 

Without these illusive images,

I impress my mazed mind

with drapery carved around my frame.

My clothes still help to show what I can’t always say

Clothes keep me buried,

I am the same illusion,

I have my own way of being who I wanna be.

We give the world an image of ourselves that we design.

gathering and glowing in different places

We filter our skin because the world doesn’t protect us.

This poem is about: 
Me
Guide that inspired this poem: 
Poetry Terms Demonstrated: 

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