Raven cloaks billow around them in dance,

such a brilliant everlasting gay prance.

We perceive them perfect in every way,

never looking to see what they did pay,

so as to dance in complete flawlessness.

Don’t you see how this unflawed purity

is a guise of pure insecurity.

Behind painted white mask they so hide,

locking in dark secrets and speaking lie.

See how they bend down in the deepest bows,

always to conceal the truth from what’s now.

They stand with forced graceful twirls for chains bind

their hands and their ankles, never to find

freedom will they, for they so choose this fate.

And how can they, see past the darkest hate,

when they are but bound from evil within?

‘Tis it not our darkened cloak that so pins?

Oh dance on, all thee so chained of friends,

dancing only wishing for song to end,

so at last they can be free of the masks.

 

I watch them, with tears a glistening in my eyes,

how it pains me that they should dance in lies.

How I see their pain as we bow low,

and beneath their white masks I see all that they will never show,

and all the beauty they will never know

and I am the same, for how can I know?

 

This deception shall rule no longer.

So I stop, standing still, watching for a moment as they continue to dance.

I see the shock in their eyes, as they see me decide

that nevermore will I dance nor be bound by these chains.

I lift my hand to my face,

the cold metal of these black chains

cutting into my skin like a crown of thorns.

My fingers touch the mask,

so cold between my fingertips

like dead roses that were never alive.

Blood dripping from my wrists,

cascading to the ground and splashing in sweet kiss.

How the cold spreads from my fingertips, burning, burning,

as if I am to be frozen and to stand petrified

as a reminder

to all who try to break the chains.

I lift the mask from my face.

Falling

falling

down.

Shattering into a thousand cries of deceit

as brilliant shards of glass cover the painted mosaic upon which we danced,

like diamonds from some sleeping beauty adorned.

The chains fall away, made unto ash upon the ground,

my cloak of black turning back to an iridescent hue.

And I laugh now, for I am flawless.

Flawless because I am lacking in the greatest deception of them all:

perfection.

Flawless because I had the courage to take off my mask.

There is nothing perfect about who I am.

I see that in pretty colors,

but at least now I am free from the deception

of what I am supposed to be.

 

It is those who choose to be

and take off the mask to be free

that are the ones who are truly flawless,

not the ones cloaked in deceptive dress.

Yet we still seem to think

that perfection only exists in the everlasting brilliance of the ball,

this alone the greatest deception of them all.