We are impersonal.
We live our lives like clouds, we are
transparent.
We try to hide, we pull our hair and reach toward
the sky and the clouds that drift unlike we
who are rock solid
we stay like rocks in the ocean,
obvious, oblivious, pressed into
shapes that do not fit us.
I do not fit into this shape.
I am an artist of face paint.
After dark I strip away the dream but
the red color never really
comes off.
Humans stay, break,
flake away like paper, and
though our roots are from
aspen or willow or pine,
we cannot return from whence we came.
We are nothing but pressed pulp.
I have often yearned for the sea, so that I might
wash away
The color from my skin that so often reminds me
of the sickly stench of well-bred roses.
My reflection is always a tone off of what
I know is right,
but we are this, I am this; this is
who I must be.
So I become impersonal.
You may look, but you do not see because
I have kept myself under
lock and key.
This is but a shell that once floated to
the bottom of the ocean.
Now, I am
unwavering.