i've done my best impression of a chameleon,
a most convincing mirage,
changing shape to fit your taste.
scurrying away from the center,
the spotlight, the danger of unseen predators.
hidden from you for so long,
you forget what color my skin used to be,
fragile and antiquated,
the pattern is falling apart in its disuse.
I'm losing myself to this aura of being,
a person who is but is not me.
A projection of what used to be,
but the picture is blurred and untrue.
the way red roses
meant 'i love you,'
but they're still
a dime a dozen at the local grocery.
so who can you blame,
when the petals brown and fall,
and 'true love' turns into 'i'm sorry..'
the words are as exhausted
as our lips are unresponsive,
these bodies growing torpid with disuse
for fear of erasing everything.
we've gained so much the phobia of failure
changes the people we were
into the shadows of who we are,
and the mountains we climbed, together,
into crumbling hills and vast cliffs of defeat.
Our only option;
to dive from the parapets
into the lonely stage below,
where our coloful changes
and our brand new attitudes
do nothing to save us
from the cold beneath the surface.
the chill, perhaps, as numb as my own body,
waiting so long, and abhoring this hiding,
this depreciative shape that shades my true form.
so alike, undisguised, i am to everything you never wanted.
sometimes i am so afraid of you and judgement,
and your hatred of my sensitivity,
loathesome, vile insecurity,
but sensibility leads me to believe you hide things, too.
i feel it in your skin, the scales.
how they prick underneath my fingers ,
like the ghosts of lies that prick beneath my skin.
as your color changes and you fade from sight again,
all i can do is try to ignore the sting and sound of
tearing flesh,
while we wait out this poison that scratches at our
chests.
no new look could provide antidote,
bleeding until there is nothing left,
but still we conjure more.
a torrent of escape that leads us nowhere.
numbs for just a moment,
so we can't feel it eat our hearts away with this disease.
though it does not instantly gratify,
it does not lack a willingness to please.
It slips through slowly, drowns us in apathy,
so we don't remember the chill of slipping underneath,
but...lizards don't have memories.

_

i change for no one.