We Wear a Masque

We approach another game of charades;

Everybody has joined in to play.

With their costumes of masquerade,

Each slyly hides his own face.

Searching for a way to be different,

I, too, paste on my disguise,

To cover up the contradictions,

And beguile you with my lies.

The disguise I wear over time will rot,

Flaking off pieces of my own skin;

Because I lived for my façade,

I die with it in my unatoned sins.

My masque had been a battle-cry of defiance.

Only now I see it showed a lack of self-reliance.