Strikingly Naked
By Odin Roark

Voicing the reflection one sees insures
the facade really is,
was,
must have been.

Time passes…

How smoky the reflection,
this aging identity of accumulated distortion,
where once perception played innocently,
found disguises to hide behind,
who now past the age of innocence,
sees the exposed abyss of shadowed deceptions.

Such awareness knows well the mirror,
where cognizance of the make-believe
beckons the right light,
the flattering shade,
the required eye-sparkle of denial,
no matter the reality.

At some point…

Behind the rehearsed and performed persona,
we raise the inner window
revealing the self-of-fact,
that place where we gulp
what air is left,
sucking up any reserved willingness
blowing in from subterranean shores
to help beat back our self-imposed exile.

One surges forward…

Pulls open the only door
the entrance we feared opening,
an opening your inner monologue
always whispered was there
but you chose to remain imprisoned
by the mirror.

Revelation…

The door now open,
leads to other doors,
so small they seem
as you bend, crawl,
find other rooms,
windowless cubbyholes,
where night sweats
and endless reprieves
once kept you breathing,
albeit your own recycled dead air.

How rewarding…

To see for the first time,
your own recidivist delusions
reverberating like shattered emulations,
blinding your eyes with its refractive light,
burning through regrettable behavior imprisoned,
where no steel bars were ever necessary,
where a place of truth awaited,
a wilderness you are finally ready to explore.

Such is the manifest moment…

When you couldn't be so strikingly naked,
had you not kept yourself so carefully dressed
all those years.