Pretend otherwise
Rooms steaming with women in towels
Hair dripping, feet slick, thrum of life
Let loose, voices shrill in gossip
Are they talking about you? Are they pulling
Their vicious needles through
Your thin, thin skin, where no one
Has been, those secret corners within 
Time turns her unwashed skirts out
The sauna is set too high to see 
Faces melt behind cloying vapor
They’ve never inhaled or felt 
The lick of a whip on their humped backs
They’ve never knelt beneath Horror
Turned her salivating jaw to heaven
Wooden masks clot bloody reminders
We’re alone in our beaded sorrow 
Nobody is listening, nobody gives a fuck
When fetal curl unfurls to the sound
Of memories lyre 
We the unhinged 
Keep our secrets well
Smooth down collars, fold napkin and screams
Straighten our socks and hair 
Careful not to show the blister
Nesting in our broken wrists
Crisscrossed with ill decision 
Harmful hope we’ll find another
Who takes our arm and runs just as fast
Whispering the lullaby of the disturbed
O to feel we’re not alone 
And put this pantomime in its tired box
O to admit our deepest sorrows
To a world willing to hear 
The pain kept swollen and wilding 
Behind dark glasses with no
Reflection.