I'm going home
to the set I was before.
These Calm, cool thoughts
have done their job,
up 'till now.
But they are fallacies
I no longer can support;
Emaciated.
The illusions have succeeded
in phasing all but the dominate voice
towering over every stage.
Every floorboard seems to creak under
my ghostly frame
and threatens to collapse into the firery swallow.
Inane resistance perplexes,
driving away everything inside me that wants,
ever so desperately
those calm, cool thoughts to retreat
and hold frail-ness close.
I grasp for something more solid than the facade
I’ve been handed,
but try as I may,
it all evaporates in my ailing grasp.
The once thick skin
now brittle, cracks
and falls away to show the wires
that keep me alive.
I’ve had a thought or two,
once or twice,
but it's too selfish for my liking.
I'd rather stay here and repair my indiscretion.

---

The acid erodes away
at my lips and melts my skin
revealing all true beauty
atomizing hideous thoughts and creatures.
Corrosion finally eats away at the chained
door I've been attending to my whole career,
ajar, it bares a maniacal blackness
that draws me from my knees
to gape at the impending menace that possessed
me long ago, during a time not sufficiently documented.
To any passer-by it looks happy, almost intimate-
the relationship we have,
but this is dominating and oppressive.
There's a certain homely air around everything
he's taught me and,
every memory of being held close,
always assuring it was all going to be okay.

 It wasn't.
I've prepared for the day I'd meet this oppressor face-to-face
but as I look at the sunken yellow eyes of my maniac
my frame quivers like a withering rose.

His voice and bone-cold touch are now inculcated in my mind

and curdles the blue in my threaded veins.
He grabs my hand
and holds me close once more.

---

He drags me to the empty space
and begins to sway my body.
I hear dampened music,
chilling my marrow.
My conscious self knows I am not
but my imagination hopes to be safe in bed,
Condoning this shrill melody to overtake my body and soul
and lead it across the floor in a combination
of beautiful pirouettes and arabesques,
my gothic skirt wisps with my very legato style,
opening to reveal delicate nylons and black wooded ballet shoes.
My absolved blond hair adds to the scene I am sure takes his breath away,
the unfailing beauty only he seems to think I convey.
My skeletal fingers headed by black slice across the saturated air
drawing circles in space.
His eyes follow me across the floor nodding, pleased.
I can tell he is impressed.
I push my emotions and body
further than I ever thought possible.
My chest heaves every breath and the leo pursues my smoothing skin.
Outlining the perfection instilled within.
As the music slows I can feel my body contract
finding the muscles I haven't used
in all those years of tyrannical persuasions.
My skirt slowly falls; giving the perfect graceful end
to my promenade.

---

As I walk toward him he grabs my thinning waist
and pulls me close to kiss his poisoned lips.
When he pushes me away I fall back through the decayed doorway,
watch him wave and pull the door shut.
I turn a shivering shoulder and run back to the set I was before,
hoping I bring my incredulous beauty back with me from his studio