The masquerade

Locked behind a forbidding door,
lost from the resonation of a thousand voices,
She wiped dewy luminescence from the pallid porcelain mask,
inaudibly clinging, while shudders vibrated the cage of her being,
A touch of pain on stained rims of speech,
brought forth an audible hiss of sting,
a mental lance to an inner cyst,

A crimson drop plunged like a dagger,
marring the snowy whiteness of the undeviating smirk,
A nipping fascination fueled her morphine drip,
drip, ….a ruby drop,
slower than crystallized time,
fueling her obsession,

She touched her finger tenderly to her bitten lip,
stanching the flow of her enthrallment,
watching the moisture pool in the ridge of a frozen smile,
she collapsed downwards to give the mask one final bloody kiss,
Leaving behind a faultless scarlet grin,
amidst seamless alabaster perfection,
a façade of her reality,

She could almost hear their presence in this locked chamber,
A whisper of pessimistic absurdity,
lurking to analyze and sequester her secret rapture,
accountability and responsibility calling her name,
forcing a meeting with her mind,
With an inner quake she stood and looked at the antique mirror,
replacing the horrors that she saw,
with seamless alabaster and a Cheshire grin,
a statuesque figure she faced the hateful door,

But she turned the old wrought iron key in the lock,
wincing with the sound of impending freedom,
she opened picture perfect eyes,
and smiled…

“Honey, I’ll be late, got a meeting at the office ….”

“Of course” she said from behind her faultless scarlet grin.