Cry for Applause

They said I shimmered

like a fountain

in the middle of a drought,

a golden glint in the eyes

of the desperate.

My face—perfectly lacquered,

archival,

caught in the snare of a thousand lenses,

a commodity carved

into the bark of tabloids.

Work was never labor.

It was choreography—

angles, elbows, half-lidded eyes.

It was signature scents,

snazzy interviews

with velvet chairs and practiced tears.

Now I sign autographs

on memory,

on pages that smell of scorched sugar and

yesterday’s applause.

Everything is an echo.

There is a skull on my desk.

It watches.

Not morbid, no—

decorative, aspirational,

bronzed in the ego-furnace

of relevance.

The cry of obscurity

isn’t loud.

It’s a whisper in the corner

where the stylist no longer waits,

where my name fades

on the call sheet

like lipstick on broken glass.

Sometimes, I press my cheek

to the skull’s temple,

pretend it’s listening,

pretend it understands

what it means

to be worshiped one minute,

then untagged the next.

I remember a man

once brought me white orchids,

said my voice reminded him

of snowfall.

I don’t recall his name.

Just the flick of the camera shutter,

the way the flash stole

what little warmth I had left.

Fame is a map

that leads you in circles.

I trace it now with chipped nails,

burned edges of a leather-bound script

I’ll never read aloud.

Change, they say, is growth.

But I’ve grown

into this gilded tomb,

one high-heeled step at a time.

My sadness is couture—

tailored, glossed,

and stitched beneath

my satin bones.

And still—

in the quiet after the studio lights die,

I rehearse

my thank-you speech

to no one.