Manikin

Might I see your collection?
You know of which I speak.

Your masks.

The one you wear when you are with your friends,
or perhaps the one you take with you to work?

Won’t you show me the one you put on
when you are pretending to care?

Maybe you’d like to see mine,
maybe the one I wear when I feign indifference
to the pain I have inside,
or the one I lace up
when you come to me for advice.

We live our whole lives behind these porcelain facades,
but do you know what terrifies me the most,
right down to the salt in my bones?

That I may have met the woman of my dreams
but she and I would never see it
because all we saw
was our masks.

~LT