On the stage of life, I paint my lips crimson, a smile stitched with invisible thread

On the stage of life, I paint my lips crimson, a smile stitched with invisible thread, While the scar beneath my ribs sings a melody only I can hear. The halogen spotlights burn intensely, bleaching the shadows where my pain retreats, Like a sleeping child, small, forgotten, yet still breathing in the deafening silence. Pirouetting with borrowed grace, each step a sonnet, each glance a verse, The audience sighs, mistaking the tremor in my hands for passion, Unaware that it is the echo of a wound I refuse to name. Ah, the art of vanishing in plain sight—how the body becomes both blade and sheath. At the end, they throw roses, their petals soft like apologies I will never receive, I bow deeply, ever deeper, until my spine becomes a question mark— Is it enough? Will it ever be enough to play this silent role amid applause? And in this flow of thoughts, each moment becomes a suspended question, A dance of shadows and lights, a struggle between what I show and who I am. I wear my mask with elegance, as the world spins around me, A stage full of illusions, where I am both the actor and the spectacle. In the silence between applause, I think of my scar that sings, Of the child asleep in the shadows, of the questions that curve my spine, And I wonder, deep in my soul, if I will ever find answers, If my stitched smile will ever become a free, unrestrained laughter.