Scraps of you scattered across this warped mosaic

Entrenched in tremors and imprints of what was left unsaid

Force it, fake it for a chorus of pretenders

Cast as your unreliable antithesis in some lurid pantomime

All made up in my guise of spite

Catching haunted excisions of what once was in thorny bouquets

I can almost tune it out

A histrionic sonata lures me even further from you

I fashion new masks as I fancy

Reveling in luxurious, amnestic anonymity

Your esurient gaze no longer amuses me

Flittering down on the breeze

Letting life wash through me, cleansing my pores of what I used to be

Can't I be anything

All I do is repel

Drawn to contradiction

Allured by what isn't

Addicted to the in between, I relish in longing itself

Reduce myself to my shadow, who no one knows

Immerse myself and dissolve in it

It consumes me

Insatiable, nebulous

All I am is what isn't quite there

On the cusp of realization, perceptually adolescent

Ever oscillating, shifting in the light

I catch a glimmer of what sounds like a memory

Sight unseen - familiar, foreign

Stumbling in a magnetic pull towards a sense of nostalgia, wonder

An ancient rite - a coming of age

Reassured by my perpetual confusion

Pack it up and press it in this book

Sculpt something immaculate and shatter it into little pieces

Sweep it up, swallow it dry

Can you stomach the truth?

Shall I serenade you with it?

Make a sick joke of it all

Tumble, rinse, and wring you out

Can't compromise for much longer or

I'll eat you alive

One day you'll realize I was never really there

A pretty picture furling at the edges

All for show, just for you

The bell tolls for me, every time

I can't wait anymore

Let's give in

To sleep, perchance to dream