Masque

She stares at me with bark brown eyes seething with icy deceit despite their warm color — like the forest surrounding her home, alive and bright, and yet a horrible mockery of it. Those eyes are sharp, poking me with needles, though the face around them is soft, yet to lose the baby fat.

Long, mousey hair cascades down from her crown, heavy and thick and limp. It’s dry. She washes it too often, wanting to put on an air of being put together, but it soon becomes greasy with how frequently she runs her hands through. She’s got more important things to worry about than her looks. Sometimes she has the energy to try harder, but it’s never mattered.

Her shoulders are bent, heavy with burdens she’s had to carry over the years. Her fingers are calloused, dusty under chipped fingernails. Stones. Books. People. Always wanting to impress, but only creating higher expectations she feels obligated to fulfill. Her back hurts and she often stares at her feet. “To watch where I’m going,” she says, but it’s just something better to say than, “I don’t like eye contact.”

Graphite smeared hands. Splashes of paint run up her arms, like she stuck them in a rainbow, remnants of feelings she allows herself. Treasures she’s obligated to make are whisked away, never to be seen again, expressing emotions others pretend don’t exist. She learns to pretend, as well.

Those around her don’t notice as she drifts from day to day, that plastic smile across her face. The singing that comes from a throat that cannot sing. Hands rejected even as they lift someone up. A mind that always has an answer, but is mocked. Bullied for her passions. Only cared for when she’s acting.

But there, right at the hairline. A small crack, diving its way down through the third eye. The mask is breaking. The skin peels back, revealing red flesh underneath. But it’s only a little. I reach up to tear at it. To help her. My hands don’t connect, and I can’t reach her. Can’t reach to who she is. Can’t reach.

Her eyes say, “I don’t know anymore.” Still, she pretends. Tells me to push through the fog. To go through the motions until I can get out of where I am now…like she does. Maybe someday the mask will come off, and eventually there will be a real person down there somewhere. Though for now, she’s invisible. Try as she might, parts of her heart wish it to stay that way. For her own sake.

We’ve always hated mirrors.