Skin

This night, I am trapped behind a face. My eyes are barred with tears that blur the look in them I would like so much for you to see. I try a different face, one that splits into a smile at the lips but the teeth are whitewashed, and they encage a voice—a song—a story—that needs air to breathe. Anger means I must glower, perhaps brighten my pale cheeks with artificial colors. Who was it that said blood within must always be crimson? I choose laughter next, but I am tired of my own laugh; it has stayed the same for countless years and the sound is so distant that I cannot hear it from deep down there inside my heart. This night, I cannot bear this face I wear for it is too small a field for my emotions to play. There are lips, red again, meant for speech but the words I utter must always be of some language, one or another I must choose amongst the millions made by these same lips in revolutionary times. There are eyes, “windows”, they have always been called but the cutting winds have long since deprived them of their original clarity—now they are clouded, dull, and always cleansed back to nothingness by constant tears. This night, I cannot bear this face I wear. So I plunge my fingers into the skin, tearing it away, feeling the wind scream and rush into the vast space, swirling down the tunnel toward that heart at the bottom that is thumping with anxiety; it has long awaited this day. A day of freedom, a day to shoot up into view, when nothing is contorted and fitted into words, tears, smiles, sounds, colors…. My faceless face gapes at the night sky, where stars hold together another faceless face, and the feelings, tangled and ripe, ripe from all the anticipation shout and hurtle upwards like a pack of angels.