that
her soul was beautiful.
She looked at him in amazement
because she thought that all this time,
he had been admiring her mask.
Her disguise was perfection,
she was told, time and again.
Beauty,
meticulously depicted.
It didn’t matter that it was an illusion,
a flawless guise
that made her
the victim of adoration.
As she glided gracefully across the floor
of the masquerade,
hypnotizing onlookers,
she smiled for the cameras.
Sometimes the flash would capture
the bit of reality that she exposed,
and what lay underneath the layers
was broken.
So when he told her
that he could see her soul,
she cringed
because on this shallow earth,
she was determined
to be nothing
but a masterpiece
until her body finally unleashed
and her soul rose up as a silhouette
and drifted away.
