Heir Imposter

I have hidden so long, the art of hiding has faded. There is no artistry in this merciless game of cat and mouse—identity and truth. 

How are the identical juxtaposed and the unified opposed in this hidden life? 

I am one mask after another, falling in a procession of dark deceit backlit by honest flashes, peeking in and out between my blurred lines.

For years, an infinite string of isolated moments, I have prayed to be what I truly am and to be seen so. Yet, every night I feel my Shepherd pull away my mask, and every morning I find myself trapped behind a new one. 

What am I, if not a versatile parasite, tagging along in the teaming crowds and gliding through life hated by none so much as myself? 

A smile’s flash, a winking eye, the whip-crack of a laugh. A silenced scream, a sob wracked chest, a pillow wet with tired tears.

What am I? I am these disguises. 

Maybe the juxtaposed and uniform are merely misplaced and misidentified. 

Perhaps these paper-thin protections and these poorly-lit projects are a part of me, a growing, breathing part of me. 


What if, my whole life I have been isolating pixels in one gigantic beam? 


What if the hand that pulls away the mask, replaces it with a new one? 


What if they are not hardened faces but instead layers of paint, covering me over and over again? 


I am not a single color or a simple shade, I am one magnificent masterpiece, and yet, I could not be a masterpiece if I was not a myriad of colors layered one upon the other. 


So, maybe today, I am blue. 

Yesterday, I was some other shade, and tomorrow I will be a new color; but today, I am what I am. 


A rush of blushed pink, a shadow of gray, and glint of glorious gold. 


I am all that I have ever been and ever will be, and it is beautiful. 


What a fluid, breath-taking sense of self! 

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