The Playhouse

To feel pain, to show fear, to blush, to shake,

all masks.

Masks rot with every use.

They flake and drift to the marble floor like ashes in a fire place.

They fill your mind with dirty butterflies, making you perceive them as real emotions.

When really they are an organ of their own,

triving inside your corpse, like a tapeworm growing in length,

harder to expel and easier to feel.

Useful for manipulation, or revenge,

or to conceal your soul.

They merely clothe that which cannot be seen.

You.

Your life, and jarred teeth,

your home built into the ground.

The longer they feed from your body,

the more deadly they become,

making your limbs adapt to that trait,

or mask.

You evolve into a creature of the playhouse.

An actor behind a false face,

like a doll dressed for the occassion.

A table draped with the right cloth.

A statue placed in the right courtyard.

Unmoving, unchanging,

stale and lifeless,

like the eyes that peer from behind the masks.

The harder you run from the stage,

the harder it is to move forward.

You will go back;

they are the only things to express the emotions from behind the lifeless eyes.

You will only ever know the masks that were made for you.