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. 

 

 

This poem is about: 
Our world

Comments

Outisseyus

***This poem is fictitious***

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