Beauty

He once told her

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.