The Stone Mask
The Stone Mask
My pride is a heavy mask of ashen stone upon a cheek of smoke,
a tower of gray slabs built high on a brow the long road burned and broke,
I boast that I alone can fix whatever life caves in upon my chest,
but beneath the cold armor weeps a child who has never truly known rest.
I am an old and weary child, my eyes drifted off to another land,
I've never known the warm luxury of leaning on a gentle hand,
I've carried shadow-boulders on my crown like a wandering mountain range,
and I called them strength, when they were only fear in a diamond dress, strange.
My head is a shattered quarry where the black blocks break loose and fall,
cubic thoughts collapse inside of me like a dying silver sky's sprawl,
every stone is a silence I once swallowed raw and let grow cold,
every crack is the scream I never allow to be heard or told.
I grew up walling myself into solitude like a muted shrine,
my only prayer was to ask nothing of anyone, down the whole line,
I made a banner of my helplessness, of pride a bed for sleep,
forgetting that even the mightiest trees fall with no hands to keep.
Come, break this mask of mine apart like an old crust of weathered clay,
let the tired infant inside me breathe his first thought into day,
let him stretch out in the tender light like soft grass after the rains,
and learn that reaching for a hand is not a fall, but a graft that sustains.
Perhaps my column of stones will then dissolve into a flight of bees,
perhaps my shoulders will turn to wings instead of walls of ruined debris,
perhaps I'll sleep for the very first time without my guard of steel,
an old child who at last leans trusting toward a sky he can feel.
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