Mr. C
Look at me now, Mr. C
I styled my hair like how you taught me
I wear the celeste gown you gifted for my embellishment
I adorned the lavalier pendant you showed me how to flaunt
I stride in the silver stilettos you so carefully sharpened for me
Watch as I command this crowd
With my beauty
Enter gracefully, head held high and spine straight
Draw in the stares with confidence
I am beautiful so they will love me.
Settle into a space of choice and look comfortable
Hide the giddy excitement felt
Gaze around the room as if mildly entertained
But not too interested. I am beautiful
Perk an ear towards the snickering and–if it is close, join in
Snickering?
There are whispers, too
Pointed like the silver stilettos and aimed stealthily
At my chest
I did not know that whispers could be sharp
One snicker approaches closer, hushing forcefully
As its owner draws nearer the table
Where my beautiful self sits.
The snickerer sneers and nears with jeering eyes
A waiter carrying aluminum platters
Decadent fromage a-la-mold
Why doth his jeering, snickering gaze linger on me?
“May I offer some cheese, Ma’am?”
Here lies his second offense, after such unwholesome gaze
My years of age suggest the address “Miss”
Obviously, because I am beautiful
Right, Mr. C?
You told me this much
While painting my beautiful face with shimmers
Your brush draw away beet red
A pretty blush, I am sure.
There was no need for a mirror
For I am beautiful, like you assure me.
I am not a Ma’am
Anger draws blood from my stomach
Towards my beautiful face
Because now the room watches
With clear contempt and mockery
I can feel it in the air
Like past moments when you
Mr. C, would caress across my skin
Your black, carefully sharpened fingernails
To only the barest whisp
Of hairs standing upright upon my arm
Before you sunk them deep
Into the vulnerable flesh.
I do not scream at the waiter or the room
Because their gazes do not evoke
The same pain as that.
But they feel similar
As the waiter, poised like a snake
Platter of reasonably-priced mold
Extends still in my direction
I meet his gaze
Firmly, not “aflutter” like you trained me
Breaking your “rule of attraction”, Mr. C
But I am beautiful so no matter.
In his eyes settle a red veneer
Although muddled, murky,
Like a sheen disguising the true iris nature.
There sits some kind of figure, too,
Within that wine-like glaze
Almost appearing like a nose and cheeks and a mouth
Then realization begets my tathered mind
And the wine-like glaze becomes not a glaze at all
But a reflection.
How can I know a reflection you ask, Mr. C?
Mr. C, you declare my beauty
When we bed together and every time in between
And there are no reflections in our home
So how can I know a reflection?
For your blackout eyes matte
Your skin glistens not, even while soaking wet
In fact, light itself only meets a stable place to rest
On the candle wicks that endlessly line each wall
In our burning, reflectionless home.
It pains me to admit a knowledge you did not gift, Mr. C.
You see, inside our home
You’ve shown to me the appearance of blood
Often enough, considering its beauty we so love
As it shoots out and down
From different spouts scattered my body
Sometimes chunks of torn flesh
Swimming along with its flow
You always ravage me then and whisper
While I groan and wail in agonized delirium
How beautiful I am.
So sometimes while you sleep
I like to cull out your sharpened fingernails
Although the pliers used to tear away those ungues
From desperate meat clinging underneath
Have begun weakening due to overuse.
Anyway, I only take them when sharpened exactly right
So that the bleeding persists enough
To form a small pond
When I dig each nail
Deep inside my skin and drag.
Because when I see my own carnage
And hover both hands slightly above to soak in the warmth,
Your rusted voice echoes
“How beautiful you look”
And once physical agony turns near orgasmic pleasure
I observe the candlelight
Cast upon my blood pool
Noticing images presented identically
In that pool to which their counterparts
Remain unmoving, real inside the room
Which shows me “reflection”.
I never seek reflections, Mr. C
Your constant proclaimance of my beauty is enough.
Yet when you are away and I bring your liberated fingernails
To my flesh again and again
The blood always draws near me
Offering its mirror eye
Regardless my better wishes
And I offer in return
My hand, sometimes to then witness
Another hand exactly the same as mine
Only tinged in bloody red and black hues
But it is my same hand
A perfect replica inside that blood-drenched pool
And this is how I can know a reflection, Mr. C.
Therefore I conclude that
The waiter before me now
Must have stolen my blood somehow
(Omitting the chunks of flesh)
And apparently
Filled his eyes with the stuff
Reflecting to me a face
That is not beautiful.
That is not beautiful?
Wait,
Desperate now for a closer look
I leap up and grab him, the waiter
By his thin shoulders
As an aluminum platter and overpriced mold tumble to the ground
CRASH!
Gasps and upset muttering reverberate around the room
And the staring scratches at my arm hairs
Similar your often light grazes, Mr. C
Right before you tear into the skin
With your midnight, sharpened fingernails.
Right before, the gazes I mean
So they do not hurt at the moment and I have some time
And my focus returns to the hidden reflection
Delicately precarious in their glistening, thin positions
On the waiter’s startled eyeballs.
Pressing my own face closer
And closer and closer
Until our skulls burrow into each other
Like they wish meld together
I see what must be a replica
Of my own eyes
Staring intently back unto themselves
Ugly eyes
With some sort of darkly-colored mush
Crawling out from underneath
Fleshy and raw
And sagging eyelids
Mr. C, you have beautiful eyes
And slender digits and rough sandpaper skin
Beneath and above your eyes
Are tight, buoyant crescents of that sandpaper skin
Beautiful.
SO WHAT IS THIS, MR. C,
What can only be my own skin
That you tell me so convincingly is beautiful
Appears to be hanging on desperately
To the undersides of my own wet and crazed
And malevolent and slippery eyeballs
Inside this thin man’s reflected oculi
Who cowers before me
As whispers and glares from the room
Begin to press down on my arms
This cannot be true because I am beautiful
Is it?
No, it can’t be!
Unless of course
My blood tells lies?
Yes that must be it!
Apologies, dear Mr. C
The redness can only be a color of deceit
As it shows me in such
An un beautiful reflection
Whereas your words are truths
And all reflections are jealous
Because I am your chosen beautiful, Mr. C
So they make poor attempts
To evoke self-loathing in me
Ah, haha!
You are too beautiful and strong, Mr. C
That they set their sights on me
Obviously.
Now I know why
You force open my body so violently every night
It is to protect me
From my own jealous and evil blood.
Thank you, Mr. C
I am beautiful just like you say
And my blood tells lies.
But oh no!
The waiter in front of me still
Has eyes with my blood in them
Only a thin veneer yet
How painful it must be for him!
Luckily I began sharpening my fingernails
Just like yours Mr. C
After you scolded me for taking yours so often at night.
Today my own nails are graciously pointed
So I can help save this waiter
Of the evil blood inside his eyes
And make him feel much better.
After all, beautiful people
Do kind deeds for others
Not another moment to waste
Plunge your protruding nails deep into the eye socket
Of this poor waiter who is clearly suffering
From the blood’s poisonous effect now
For he is screaming!
Horrified gasps around the room
As you dig further in around the slimy sphere
Trying to reach the back for a good grip
The room must be scared for the man
Agonized by the eyeball blood
But understanding in their sense
That someone, you, are helping him to feel better
Because they quieten considerably
And wisely leave the room.
His head lurches back
Resisting your kind treatment
So you tightly grip at the back
Of his buttery-brown hair
And re-enter your nails
Finally snagging around the tight space
All mushy and pulsing and warm
And you tug hard as the man’s shrill sobbing
Reaches a peak decibel
Ouch! Your ears.
But hooray! For the first half of treatment has worked
And the squelching and bloody eyeball
And fleshy and squirming root attached
Have been dislodged
Of their parasitical obsession with remaining anchored to
This poor man’s skull.
You drop the evil reflector to ground
And begin your treatment on his other eye
Still infected with your evil blood.
Because your blood tells lies
And you are beautiful just like I
Mr. See,
Always say that you are.