Sarcophagus

Here is a girl.
Or rather, a sculpture of a girl,
Carefully chiseled by experience itself
And sanded down to precision over the course of many years
From a distance she looks human.
Her clothes, her hair, her bag on her shoulder
Blend her into the mass around her known as society.
But she is not a human.
She is nothing but a statue- unmovable, unwavering, stoic.
Her eyes are but mirrors, reflecting.
They reflect the faces and the emotions of those who pass by her.
They agree and they sympathize,
And sometimes they make people forget that by themselves,
They are emotionless.
They are only mirrors, after all.
And like all mirrors, they go blank when the image leaves.
Mirrors are deceiving sometimes, but they never lie.
Only the rest of her does.
Beneath her armoured skin lives chaos.
It spits and burns like bile,
Trapped inside its stone dungeon.
It churns around her insides like a venomous snake
And she fights it.
She lashes back at it, suppresses it.
Sometimes she manages to squeeze it so tightly,
It oozes out a substance that, only in the vaguest of senses,
Resembles happiness.
And only because it has nothing left to give.
This is the viscous substance that slides unwillingly out of her skin,
Into the outside world.
It too, is deceptive.
It is poison, but it makes her seem ever so slightly mirthful.
Thankfully, it is all the world needs to be convinced that she is an ordinary human being.
Ordinary. Human. Two things she will never be.

Reflection

I used to be so sure

Of everything;

Of my world and all its contents.

I used to wake up from refreshing sleep

And smile with self-satisfaction at the mirror.

I used to look deep into the eyes of my reflection,

Through a camera lens crystal clear

And see a world, so beautiful, so perfect.

I used to walk along a path, delicately paved,

Each stepping stone aligned just right,

The way I liked it.

That land was a wonderland,

A dreamscape, if you will.

But dreams don’t last forever,

As I’m sure you are aware.

And now, as I peel my eyelids apart

After restless nights,

The turmoil of my sleep

Having seemed to knock the lenses out of focus.

The angles are all wrong now.

The smooth roads crack relentlessly,

And I trip at every turn.

The soft lullabies of weeping willow branches

Turn into screams.

The light spring rains

Evolve into thunderstorms of tears.

The gently rolling clouds

Suddenly turn into clusters of smoke,

Black and gray and sickly yellow.

My world is filled with smoke and mirrors,

Screams and tears.

Where did this haze come from?

I have no idea.

But it chokes me.

And it chokes my reflection,

Suffocating its clarity and perfection.

I lost the one thing I thought I would never lose.

I lost sight of myself.

Now, I stare desperately at my reflection,

But my eyes are only as deep as the glass.