The Mask of Fidelity

From our marriage tombs, those cavern rooms, through the barred windows past which so many an Orpheus and Ophelia fair have plummeted, we lurk -- clutching the varied masks of fidelity.

From the gates and ramparts, the needling watchtowers of Hell we have looked upon a greener pasture through borrowed eyes, and mindful of our bleak lot, we pitch our tents toward despair and self destruction.

Sighing brief sighs of life through foreign lips, we sing the songs of other people who unashamedly describe the things of which we are afraid -- the things for which we tremble in abject humiliation.

Wearing our stone, our wooden faces, our feathered masks and war paint of many colours, we deny the things we want and need, unable to unwear the mask, unable to breathe, to be oneself, to face each other with level eyes.

We hide behind so many suns and moons, so many panthers and crocodiles and demon howls. We grin through stolen teeth the lie of happiness and twist the truth of grief into a thousand mysteries.

The greatest mask of all is the mask of trueness, fidelity, oneness. Like an infinite hallway of mirrors and swords, spiraling into the depths of the universe, our true desires and motives lie beyond a billion different doors.

A stranger could get lost in any one of them. Trapped, like an animal waiting for the hunter to return, but the hunter is dead, the hunt abandoned to time and the early grave.

So many of our loves and lives end thus, yet we persist in complication, ruination, testing ourselves unto oblivion.

Love is never finished destroying what we thought would never change. It is the sun and the water, the furnace and the hammer, to our pathetic mettle.