BEING UNMASKED

I want to throw off this face
that pretends that I am cool.
Toss these shoes that think
they protect me from movement into life.
I want to burn these gloves
that try to warm me from the cold
calculations of my hands.
And this shirt I want to tear from my breast
so my heart no longer
hides beneath the veneer of fashion or choice.

Even this bodily container is too much to bear!
I want to flay the skin from my flesh,
scrap the flesh from my bones.
I want to dance the flamenco
on the sidewalk before friends,
my sun-washed heels clacking
on concrete like a pair of dancing hammers.

I will dance across the harsh earth
until the powder of my bones blows
across the Kalahari desert.
There, a lone hyaena, exiled from his tribe,
finds my frowning bleached skull laying in the dust.
Taking pity on a fellow traveler,
he cracks the plates
of my skull into thin shards
strewing them over the parched sand.

Then I’ll wipe my brow and notice it’s
still there.
My mask.
Maybe I’ll laugh until I cry,
the tears seeping out the latex holes
of my eyes,
running down latex cheeks.

I’ll cry for 52 years
or until I stop.
Then, one day, like any other,
I’ll go to work and
sitting in my office find the mask washed away.