Medusa's Lament

I'm always keeping my distance from people

I think from some irrational fear that they'll trip and run into me

and just when bump into me

I'll ring hollow

That my skin is the only layer to myself

and I'll disappear forever, finally ridden of my woes

That I betrayed myself one too many times

That I've flayed myself apart for some abstract ideal

and now I'm left a mutation of their will

With their voices howling through my skin

Tearing the seems, bubbling through in their twisted slush

As my body leaks through their stitches and seams

Waves of agony collimating for want of the void's touch

I'm terrified that they might wake up one day

and realize that all I am is a facade

A jester and a fool hiding behind their mask

That beneath those ill despised masks is some wretched flagellant

Barely able to see through the blood clotting in my eyes

Brands and scars twist across body and soul

That my mind mutilated and corroded

Leaving only delirious ravings

I'm terrified, of that abstract fear

of someone finding out who I am

That I'll be unveiled as merely a placid statue

Trying to convey in all of its feeble attempts

That it too is human, and expresses it through its woes

But it can express no other emotion than suffering

It is forsaken to the ideal of portraying our turmoil

And that its vines can only be stone

They will always be bruised and blistering

Because there is no escape from a soul of stone

From the birth of imperfection and sorrow

It is not a curse delivered from God

But a blight inflicted on you from man's lesser half