The MILLION-YEARS MASQUERADE:
Vanity
I
Please consider this poetry, or consider it a sequel to that letter I wrote you; regardless, here is an overlong confession that I think about you too much:
II
The blank page is a mirror
upon which I’ve found myself
occasionally writing apologies:
sometimes in lipstick;
sometimes in fog;
sometimes in nightmares;
sometimes in blood.
And sometimes, in You.
These ghoulish, glassy excuses
will haunt me forever
alongside everyone
I’ve ever truly, deeply loved.
But, always with a steady hand,
I write.
In everything else,
I tremble,
trying to hold onto something
that isn’t there; isn’t mine.
I tremble even in you,
the thing I wrap myself in
after bathing,
the only toy
I’ve ever taken into the shower
with me.
And so I write again,
as always,
to apologize for my apologies,
to wrap you in my curvy message–
the only hug I know–
so I might keep you
here forever
alongside the ghosts
of everything else I’ve hugged
to death.
We’ll all sit and talk,
together, about the loneliness we share,
and
the longer you don’t respond,
the more my feelings will change . . .
diamonds against glass, carving pictures
I think you might like
so you will stop and look at me
for maybe just a moment
with my favorite face of yours;
and then I will talk about you
to my diary
so I might be better next time.
I wonder
if I’ve ever been YOUR diary,
marked by you
like nothing else in the universe.
Remember when you told me
I was a field of sunflowers?
Many things inside of you,
dancing toward light in unison.
Before that, I was your Marietta Madame
Deficit, trying to fill myself with you,
the blood of the Sun King,
so I could birth a Savior
for us,
overfed
in our Hall of Mirrors
while all our babies starved to death.
But what am I, now,
to you?
Are the flowers still alive?
Is there a violin there? A castle?
Something without shape or need?
Or maybe
you don’t think of me at all anymore;
but nothing will stop me
from dancing through cotton fields
and moonlight
whenever I hear
the bittersweet music we made.
III
And so I write again,
drawing lines of guilt and hope
inspired by a lifelong need
to conjure an idea of you,
the ever-changing thing I call
“my love.”
Part 2 (“Mister Lonelyhearts Talks About Privilege”) will be posted Thursday night, November 16, 2017.
Love always,
your Mister
Lonely Hearts Chapel 