There are many things I’ve let you believe
And I’ve let you believe the horror is near
I see you and gently, I lightly… deceive
By omission my mission is clear
The horror is not close, not looming, but terrible and free
To haunt my loved ones
And hated ones
An empty threat affecting nobody
To walk the halls of who used to be… me
You think I feel too much
That I am giving and garish and godless and free
Some of my friends even wish they could be like me
But those who truly know me have manufactured
Ways to tolerate my story
Though the story is just one percent
Of the things I will not let you know
I keep you worried to the exact amount that I believe
You need
To feel like I am truthful
But not so much that you will leave
For moody to be, to feel I should, then, be free
To feel this now, then that then
To feel a variety of things
That contradict each other
To do that one must be somebody
But internal experience has shrivelled away
As I have optimised being in my prison
My poison failed to kill me but it has replaced the need for blood
The poison pumps and cleans my heart as I watch my life, my mind
Completely flood
I am not intense, for intensity flames within
It would
I am smoke and mirrors and ashes molded into clay
The many earthen masks of everything I’ve been
It’s a paradox to want to get to know me
Because you think that means understanding
My absence
So you read some more as I practice my poem
You see photos of what nobody used to see
You listen to the person claiming to be me
I am not unstable, because I never change at all
I cannot feel, but I can perform
And is an actor unstable for mastering every role?
—
written on 2020–12–30
