The Great Imposter

By M. Allshouse

I am the great imposter.

Born of fear, forged in survival.

I was never meant to walk the plains of my own existence—

yet here I meander,

lost in the alleyways of myself.

This mind is a wretched place.

No mercy here,

just echoes of a life I watched

but never lived.

A spectator in my own mythology,

bearing witness to every whispered unraveling.

Maybe I was always this.

Anchored.

Chained to the stage

as the reluctant lead

in an anthology of ill intent

written just for me.

Or maybe I’m the playwright—

pen in hand,

curating each cruel edit

like an artist who only paints in self-ruin.

Protagonist... antagonist.

Is it possible to be both?

To play the lead—

and still be cast the villain?

Two halves of my soul

fighting for the right

to inhabit this mortal flesh.

Waiting for the moment

one devours the other—

a lost twin

in the womb of my mind.

Two sides of a coin

but the weight has been tampered with,

and the ferryman doesn’t take forged pennies.

So I stall.

Neither fight nor flee—

just freeze

and wait to be rewritten.

Maybe this version of me

was stitched by my mother.

A strange mimic

of all the pieces I despised,

and I try to wrap them in kindness

and a smile,

and pretend it’s the perfect disguise.

They say it’s noble to grow from your past—

but what if the past took root—

and rotted me from within?

Maybe the mask was never for them—

maybe I wore it

so I wouldn’t have to face the reality beneath the lies.

Is that not the cruelest fate?

To ache for connection

but fall short at the toll?

The cost of becoming

what I thought they wanted—

until even the mirror

couldn't find my soul.

I've never been able to be just normal.

But this melancholy façade,

this iron mask

clings like second skin.

Was it crafted?

Or was it always mine?

Will my children carry the same weight—

creators and casualties

of their own design?

Will they echo my silence

when there’s nothing left of me

to answer them?

I pray they won’t.

But I don’t know who I pray to.

God was a script I could never memorize.

Now I speak in rituals

meant to comfort my daughters,

while my son carries the burden

of unconfronted truths.

But I digress—humanity does not care for my soul.

I will wear this mask and speak the script just as I was told.

The Greatest Imposter of All

By M. Allshouse

There’s a kind of warmth that clings to skin—

another that hums quieter,

settles somewhere deeper.

You always knew how to stir

what’s soft and slow in me.

But maybe this isn’t the hour for verse...

Or maybe that’s why it begs to be written:

thoughts and musings stirring,

too early to ache,

too late to pretend I don’t.

I suppose the real question is:

Am I speaking to an audience

or a co-conspirator?

Someone who knows not just the heat stoked,

but the ache beneath these

carefully chosen words.

I’ll speak to either,

but I can’t pretend this stage

doesn’t feel colder

when I’m the only soul still standing on it.

And perhaps,

it’s not unfamiliarity that keeps you away—

just a seat you’ve taken backstage,

unwilling to step back into the light.

Then it would seem I speak to neither.

Just longing echoing in an empty chamber.

I’ve never been one for rehearsal,

not when the words are a platform

for my soul and the burden it carries.

Maybe they belong in the dark now,

where all forgotten scripts are shelved—

no audience,

no collaborator,

just silence

that never forgets to answer.

Perhaps I joined the wrong theatre.

Or maybe I came on the wrong night.

Isn’t this where I was meant to be?

Speaking verse in a venue long shut down,

offering something sacred

to an audience that no longer gathers.

Are you the poet backstage?

Or just the ghost of this theatre?

Haunting the place where I once believed

the script was real,

and the role—you—was written in starlight.

You weren’t acting. Not then.

You were the role.

We were the script.

Fate itself had cast us into something

too sacred to be pretend.

So no,

that wasn’t on-the-fly work.

It was a cry—

for communion, not critique.

I wasn’t asking if the lines were solid.

I was asking if your soul still hears mine.

But maybe that was foolish of me.

Maybe it’s time I stop offering poetic musings

like offerings to a god

whose favor I’ve already lost.