Obsess. Crave beauty in cosmetics, starvation, surgery. Erase the person below your skin. |
You make this world into a superficial document A text message of who's who's and what's what's How to's and make up's So superficial with candy lips and silicone breasts Your skin may look like honey But the taste is only aspartine "Do you find it beautiful?" A carbon copy of you appraises a purchase with shrewish eyes Her words are always lies, but you know this Years before, nobody would have ever mistaken the two of you for each other Now everyone in your circle of friends is indistinguishable You can't remember the last time someone called you by your name Everything is visual The other four senses have lost their place in your world The soft curves of your figure long since drained hard and thin by liposuction The taste of candy became akin to sin; replaced by no-cal sweeteners and elliptical machines Pretend that feeling of starvation in your gut is really nothing but hunger Perfume bursts burn the nose, paint the back of your throat You vaguely realize you have forgotten the scent of human skin And through it all there is the want--want want want Of shining metals and flickering electronics and bright gyrating lights Simple as children, staring at God's toy store Drool pooling, tongues thick, eyes dilated in anticipation Clumsy fingers fumbling at momentary desires Your own graceful fingers fumbling at the waistline of someone else's jeans Hard, sleek bodies coaxed close for an instant But their vapid, flitting pace reminds you too much of yourself to stomach for long And so you wander in this maze of siren music and blazing colors Only to realize as you stumble home drunk and alone that the music sounds like wailing That the beat of the bass is too much like your sluggish pulse You touch long, perfectly rectangular nails to your temples and gasp with an illness you cannot name Stare blindly with eyes so different than the ones nature gave you When you look up the streets have changed, but you have not moved at all You realize you never change at all And though you are beginning to understand that it will not matter, you wonder if you can find your way home And so you slowly slip away into soporific drugs Let the men draw their hands over you, admire your fake flesh and tight starving body Only to burrow into you without kisses or words To do things to you that would make their mothers ashamed And leave before the clock begins to buzz and the dawn rises Their debauchery left forgotten in the twilight of your bedroom You stumble down the streets in daylight, disoriented Tripping in heels that make the muscles burn all the way to your lower back Flitting from store to store, searching for the perfect item, something that has eluded you If only your vocabulary were better, you would know that what you feel now is desperation Your hands graze through the aisles of beautiful fabrics, trace miles of yarn What you're looking for isn't here, but you cannot imagine that what you need might be unable to be bought You cannot bear to leave empty handed A cashmere wrap beckons you, hundreds of dollars for little more than an ounce of hair Yet it is full of empty promises And you are in the mood to believe The clerk swipes the card, then looks disgusted "Your soul has already maxed out its line of credit. Do you have another form of payment?" But there is nothing, you have nothing left to give And over the weeks and months, the urge to talk fades away You learn to giggle at jokes you do not care enough to understand Learn to smile prettily at the men who will use you as a receptacle later in the night Learn to lie as completely as your friends do All the while something seethes and boils beneath the surface You suspect this feeling may be anger But the pills you swallow make you blissfully dead inside When you go home at night you do not even bother to wash your face The makeup has left a permanent stain, become irreversible You cannot remember what you used to look like before you ever put it on You scan helplessly through old photo albums, but are unable to identify yourself in any of the pictures You find yourself staring blankly for long periods of time Sometimes with the TV blaring senselessly, sometimes not And when you try to recall exactly what it was you were thinking about Nothing comes to mind Strutting through sunny streets, streets that are as bright and tanned as you are, just as superficial You become truly lost for the first time Not because the area has changed, but because you cannot remember exactly what your home looks like The dips and turns in the road all bring you to other streets with beckoning billboards of gorgeous women who are utterly indistinguishable All run past tiny designer shops, store clerks with animatronic smiles who will not recognize you no matter how many times you enter And so you wander alone, heels clipping the pavement and the heat radiating up at you The sun should have sunk hours ago, but nothing ever changes in this place This maze of golden streets continues, until you finally sink, exhausted, to your knees Beneath one of the perfect, flawless models of the billboards with her haughty pout And you notice that none of them ever seem to smile You have been too long without drugs The exhaustion has frayed your nerves And you are not stupid anymore, not happily numb And something has become quite clear to you-- You are angry In fact, you are pissed You decide that the billboard model will bear the brunt of this wrath So you take shaking, tenuous steps up the ladder, not thinking to remove your stilettos They are as much a part of you as your soul at this point But you are determined to deface her As she has defaced you You dig through your tiny clutch bag for something to damage her with, frustrated at your ineffectual array of creams and towelettes and perfume bottles Finally you pull out a tube of lipstick And are dismayed to realize it is the same product being advertised on the board You hope it will show up Because everyone needs to see You scrawl your message to the world, garish in Pomegranate Shimmer And a tiny piece inside you gasps, shudders, and begins to breathe again When you turn away, the sun is sinking into the waves in the distance And the wind is blowing at you from the sea You let your legs dangle from the edge of the platform, swing your bare feet The caress of the failing sunlight a thousand times more sensual than your many lovers ever were Heels dropped casually to the ground below The wind has a scent, you realize And this is the first time you have ever noticed it It smells of salt grains and dead plants and fish Real, like nothing else in your world And you realize that from this height You know exactly where you are You whisper to yourself the only prayer you will ever speak again: Lord, protect us from the things we think we need. |