Couture for the Wounded
by M. Allshouse
Do I look like someone pretending?
Maybe not.
Maybe I’m just a great actor,
a natural-born talent—able to mislead and deceive.
Would you know my heartache
if I weren’t so painstakingly obvious?
Wearing my wounds like the latest couture fashion—
this one was expensive,
custom-made by a designer I’ve never met,
though everyone insists exists.
It’s clever needlework,
the way anguish threads itself into the seams of my life,
each design already out of fashion
by the time I’m brave enough to wear it in the light.
Do the colors betray me on stage?
The stage of my life, painted in dark purples and bruised blues—
the director’s choice to camouflage the damage,
to make the bruises on my knees
look like part of the scenery,
not the proof of how often they made me kneel and plead.
Should I take a bow?
Would it grant my heart a standing ovation,
trampled like forgotten props?
Did they catch how I forgot my lines near the end,
when my paramour ad-libbed a break-up,
leaving me wordless under the spotlight?
Do I look like someone pretending?
Or am I simply too good an actor for you to tell?
Couture for the Wounded
by M. Allshouse
Do I look like someone pretending?
Maybe not.
Maybe I’m just a great actor,
a natural-born talent—able to mislead and deceive.
Would you know my heartache
if I weren’t so painstakingly obvious?
Wearing my wounds like the latest couture fashion—
this one was expensive,
custom-made by a designer I’ve never met,
though everyone insists exists.
It’s clever needlework,
the way anguish threads itself into the seams of my life,
each design already out of fashion
by the time I’m brave enough to wear it in the light.
Do the colors betray me on stage?
The stage of my life, painted in dark purples and bruised blues—
the director’s choice to camouflage the damage,
to make the bruises on my knees
look like part of the scenery,
not the proof of how often they made me kneel and plead.
Should I take a bow?
Would it grant my heart a standing ovation,
trampled like forgotten props?
Did they catch how I forgot my lines near the end,
when my paramour ad-libbed a break-up,
leaving me wordless under the spotlight?
Do I look like someone pretending?
Or am I simply too good an actor for you to tell?