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The Mask
I feel as if I am buried alive
Yet I smile and rspond with "Fine, thank you."
I have been appropriately conditioned, like fine leather
That no one wants to hear the painful truth.
An essential part of me, a limb
A constituent of my earthly being
Has been violently amputated.
Yet I laugh at the mediocre conversations
A verbal splash in a shallow puddle
Pretending to be a player of the words
That no longer have meaning.
My heart has been ripped from my bosom
No benevolence granted
No explanation
No apologies
Only cataclysmic pain
Only agony
No anesthesia remains, just the bitter pain.
Yet I wear the mask
Day to Day.
Pretending I fit in
But really I'm a foreigner to this new land
An alien language they speak.
And as I attempt to translate the words
Still, they mean nothing to me.
Sequestered in the mask
They hear not the music I dance to
Nor the words I speak
Nor the pain I echo
Nor the native language of my eyes
They will never really know me, behind the mask.
Dear Cheyenne copywrite 1996 revised 1998 by Joanne Cacciatore
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