The Dressing Room

The Dressing Room

The mask through which I encounter myself:
Stripped of myself and all my possessions.
Who would not wish to mask his defects?

To powder away freckles and moles,
To hide the wrinkles of age.

A removable object, mute and dumb,
Hanging there uselessly, yet beneath its guise
Harboring a void that cannot be made up.

The mask!

With hollow eyes it stared back at me
While a cold shiver climbed through me,
The urge to smear myself with makeup,

To become a theatrical personage,
With blazing applause in the stalls all around.

The mask.

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