Magic Show

I am a magician, or perhaps a sixth sense was embedded into my DNA.

Faces pass, they come and go like moon tides.

Whoever they are, my eyes read them, studying their exteriors.

They all bear at least one crack in their fated facades.

The surface does not often match the pink, fibrous shade of their core.

I have observed a mellow woman, who wringed her face into a yellow grin.

Her insides begged for death in streams of pale blue.

Ask the revolutionary question, "Are you okay?"

Wait for the emotional answers to come flowing out as river's pain.

But they never arrive.

These people will respond with a simple nod, or the insistent, "I'm fine."

Somehow, my body feels their affliction, it senses their reality buried six feet under in the bleak soil of the earth.

They enshroud themselves in orange bursts of laughter and a familiar, pearly script.

Fearful of a cruel world that will label them, expose the anguish in their shadow souls.

I am no magician, I do not possess a sixth sense.

I only share a similar disguise, the kind that cracks like crystal, window glass.

Suffering is no stranger to me, we roam blackened waters as one.

People constantly pass me by, and I discern their trudge through that dreary, charcoal lake.

A past of unraveling the stories of others,

seeing the darkness advance,

expressions of compassion and understanding for their vulnerability,

if they so choose.

Here I am, in a bind of many colors,

remaining unseen behind a looking glass,

reflecting the faces that fluctuate through my life.

If I were a magician, I could unburden all of our pain.