Inside, We're All Afraid Of Something

I built this stage single handedly. I hand-stitched the heavy purple curtains
and laid the mahogany floorboards. I placed the trapdoor where no one else
would find it. I held the auditions myself and having chosen you, I gave you
the power to do as you pleased. We would be famous, our two-person cabaret.
All we had to do was believe in the truth.

Some nights, she'd watch us acting on that stage and she'd silently scream
your name till her breath came in gasps. Her telepathic message was
terrifyingly clear and meant for you two but each time we touched on stage,
you brought me into her psychic circle and we both heard her calling. Yes,
we pretended we couldn't hear what she said but we did hear her, you and I.
We moved the audience enough to make them demand an encore and as we smiled
and gave them what they'd asked for, our smiles were marred by the same wet
sheen her tears left on her cheeks. Still, we kept the show going and let
this run its course, powerless against the forces that threatened to teach
us to believe that a lie could be fashioned into truth if we tried hard
enough.

The show finally ended and we turned each other loose. Me to nurse the angry
red tracks I knew would soon appear, and you to nurse yourself and her back
to sanity. The goodbye was dry-eyed. Neither of us was willing to cry for
the stillborn emotions we had created. Together, for a moment in the
limelight, we had created something beautiful, something that belonged on
another plane, in another dimension and yet, underneath the faux glamour lay
the realization that somehow, even though the audience didn't notice, she
had. She had watched us as we jumped our cues, plunged in and took too much
too early, from each other. She had tried to make us see that this wasn't
some make-believe show. That no matter how daintily we dressed our lie, we
could not make it true. We should have listened. Instead, we'd played god
and fallen through the trapdoor I so carefully hid. That, was the painful
truth.

Stumbling blindly away from each other, we could only think if only... if
only that encore hadn't drowned out her voice...
~~a~~