With the elegant, wild, quicksilver, Flashes of a dull blade catching on the seams of a Moth-eaten reality; A masquerade ball by the moniker of "life," Accusing in its methodical rhythm, I peel like the skin of bitter onion, cruel in It's silence as your heart seeps through your Eyes. Yet filled with the bittersweet symphony of unshed tears and tender memories. The latent shadows that wash the room Are the shadows of words left unspoken.

And I am dazzled, my eyes cheated, by The burnished glisten of the blade of life, a silver lotus in A barren field. Innocence peeled from my turnip skin, left To gather dust upon the shelf, along with miniature steeds of childhood; A spattering of the crimson nectar of a wistful heart the only thing to mourn them.

Super-Hero's exist only the locked corridors of my mind; My hero hides like the sun in her bed of cloud's in the shell Of a man I thought I knew, too weary to face the world this day. So, like the sun, Who turns her back and pulls the covers further around her shoulders, my hero declines, His warmth is not to be found in the eyes of this man, that glitter with a thousand honeyed lies, Their color that of November ice in a pond. Hero's are human, Whispers an idle thought, scented like Autumn, and still the Knife peels away What I can't afford to loose.

I am a cricket in a dried field of corn, idly plucking at the strings of my violin, Playing a symphony with no audience, playing for myself. I'm a song that only I know the lyrics to; The rest of the world must improvise and create their own. I am a cocoon, held by the silver-gloved hands of a child, Whose breath smells like a promise. Yet what shall transform into? Butterfly? Or the forsaken, tattered, shell of a locust, it's slender form rattling in September rain, dreaming of August?

Peeling away to expose the silver and cream core Of myself. Peeling away to smile at Apollo. I gaze into the ripple Of reality, and am greeted by a masquerade mask spun of gossamer Spider silk and fallow gold tears spun from the sun. I contemplate the hallow space Of twilight behind the eyes slits, and ponder whose eyes I lie behind, whose skin this intricate design is. I fear I know not the answers, for I fear to remove the mask, for fear of what lies unknown beneath.

Using the vines of imagination, I scale the castle of Tomorrow, to get to your story, to find My slumbering Super-Hero, so that I might finally Tell him who I have become. So that I might inquire, in turn, where he Has been, and where he is going. He will reply, "To find out why the winds die, and where the legends Go."

Take my hand, you of the November ice eyes, you of The sun-rayed locks, you whose lips drip poisoned nectar As you lie yet again, to Origami queens and rice paper Kings, To the dark-haired child on the hilltop who awaits the sunrise of Truth. The child who gathers your lies like shattered fragments of Stained Glass, while they may cut her fingers, and cause her Heart to crack, she gathers them, holding on to your sweet falsehoods Like precious silvers of gold and silver, Because it is all you dared leave her.

Go ahead and smile like the fickle serpent you Are, make no attempt to hide your flickering tongue Of barbed appeasements, or the scales upon your eyelids. For you are secure in the knowledge, that as the dark haired Child gazes at you with eyes overflowing with all the Greek Tragedies, That she will love you still. That she will release the dove to fly to The safety of the bosom of the sky, while she remains by your side, Never to take true flight for the sake of your selfish self.

You never met her eyes When you finally razed all trust from Her, did you? Why? Were you afraid of what Her eyes might hold? Or did you fear you Might witness, mirrored in the ocean Of her eyes, a glimmer of yourself, that not Even you, master Story-Weaver, dare face?

So leave her yet again, As you have always left, When the wind whispers "Come away." Leave her bereft shadow that she is, With no Knight to follow in the wake of. Or, dare to speak the Truth, and peel back the Past, and Look only to the future with her, until the day breaks and the shadows flee.

Then, perhaps when at last You meet her eyes, you will see there Hope, dangling from a gossamer strand of love, Like your slow-spinning redemption.