The mask of myself.

I have yet to figure out how to take off my mask.

It stifles my voice, muffles my essence

It is saturated with the condensation

of whom I might be.

And then I am reminded

enclosed is a person I’m not sure I’ve seen.

So, I take the chance to remove the mask.

I pull

I prod

and with a crack and a pop

it falls from my face

and shatters on the floor

and when I look up, that mask is no more

in its place is a sad sort of face

But it isn’t the me I expected.

Beneath that mask is a little girl

who has never known how to be herself.

She watches the world like you might watch a movie

She analyzes the way people react

to each other

to her

She adjusts

She watches them smile

when she plays through the script

She fashions a mask made of

everything they need her to be.

The face changes, and she is a teenager and then a young woman.

And then a mother.

For the first time in her life, she thinks she knows herself.

She knows happiness and true love and fulfillment.

This tiny person looks at her as if she is enough.

As if she is the reason plants dare to break free of their seeds

As if she is the sun they reach for.

And she tries her hardest to hold on to this face, this feeling.

But then she remembers that tiny person is the only seed she's ever managed to grow. The rest never germinated.

The moment slips away.

So many moments, already gone.

I pick up the pieces of the mask

I fashion it into a new shape

I make sure the smile is right-side-up.

I slide it back over my face.

I muffle the could have been.

I stifle the never was.

I hope the condensation of grief does not

saturate who I am trying to be.

Because she needs me. But she does not need everything I carry.