shall we liquefy, oh you and I?
The windows are tall, wide, without frames across them. The fluorescent lights behind me reflect in the glass, overlapping with streetlights and the snow from outside. I can't smile; my face is frozen. Not with emotion, you understand, not with some deep slick-scarred and reddened wound, but with a thick, caked masque. My eyes are covered, lid and lash, and my cheeks stay stiff under the weight of the airy powder. This face isn't mine, not through any fault of its own but simply because I chose to be someone else tonight. For an hour or two this façade, this form, was alive and moving and truly mattered; even when backstage this woman had a soul. Now my body's back, in torn black pants and a raggedy sweatshirt, with a backpack strapped to my bony shoulders. But the face remains, like a Photoshopped magazine cut-out, smooth and shiny-haloed in its perfection. As my mother pulls into the parking lot, headlights emerging from the whirly-snow sparkly-stars angel-dusted night, I contort my face--my face, underneath hers, underneath this other--and walk past the janitor to leave the building behind. From above me as a open the door, a puff of white dislodges and lands--feathery soft--on my head. A flake finds its way to my cheek and sits, melting and ruining my--her--calm demeanor. When I reach up to brush it away, a lump of the powder comes away on my finger and I know that at this rate, the face won't last. Tomorrow's another show.