As I stand on the two feet of some other form of being,
the curtains open and breath hitches in my lungs.
I blink nervous tears from the corners of my eyes and raise my head,
peering through coated lashes at the several hundred nameless silhouettes before me.
Doubt is the only poison clouding my mind, but drinking the first air of excitement,
it immediately drains away. The sun,
my sun,
rises above me, and suddenly we’re lost--
all of us--
consumed by the thought of this Other Life,
and I walk out of myself as the entr'acte begins.

Speaking words through bright red lips that don’t belong to me
to strangers I’ve never met, I begin to starve--
a lust for something that only the souls of high heeled shoes can give me.
Nonetheless, passionate dialogue trots on while my insides quiver
with want for something more,
something spoken word doesn’t offer.

And then I get it; piano becomes forte and I take off,
my body a harmony to the melody escaping my mouth,
adrenaline coursing through my veins,
a crescendo from chest to finger to hip to toe, I’m on fire--
a hungry flame spreading to the others like me,
to the several hundred gazes that I can no longer feel,
and to the person I once was and will be tomorrow morning.

Dizzying ecstasy fades away
with the vibrations off of the walls around me
as the orchestra breaks into
small
singular
frequencies.




Eventual silence grabs hold of my shaking limbs
before the darkness in front of me erupts into a deafening roar.
Character forces back a smile that’s begging to be released,
and I momentarily remember:
buried beneath foreign flesh, I still reside.
Here, fixated in my world somewhere between reality and fantasy,
I am the best form of myself.