We all wear masks,
Some a veiled covering
Others opaque,
Disguising ourselves to the world.

Your mask is laced with fake smiles,
Draped with feigned laughter,
Concealing your soul,
You charlatan.

But we are all charlatans in this world,
Concealing the truth of our lives,
Our thoughts in the murky middle.

Truth is laced in our Freudian slips,
Our conscience only revealed when the mask shatters like broken glass.
Fragmented, broken, destroyed,
And we fall apart.

But some recover and place a new mask over the fallen old,
Only to remain with silent screams
For the glass in the soul
Creating searing scars
Making massive characters.

Others let the mask fall
No pieces to be picked up
So broken that the glass brings about a numbness
Scars for the world to see
The broken man.

Neither in this life causes less sorrow.
The mask is our destruction,
Our salvation.
The only thing that allows us to be human.