” Hala, why don’t you wear lipstick like all the girls do? ”
Let’s see, while you cover your words with deep red lies, I cover mine with the steel cold truth. I wouldn’t dare say that I’m looking down at you, but your heels wouldn’t reach my pedestal no matter how bad they kill your toes. You look at the world from a gorgeous deep window, with black velvet drapes, always perfectly drawn, while I step out the door. Get the sand in my hair, let the sun dye my hair, and get the gravel shoved down my throat. I step out and the world hugs the air out my lungs, I get black eyes for makeup and scraped knees for dresses. While you’re dusting off compact mirrors, I’m out there in the trenches, yelling hold, but the fire keeps shooting straight through.
While you’re behind the glass, staring, thinking why I don’t use lipstick like the other girls do, I stare back wondering, why don’t you step out of your glittery shadow. Why don’t you taste the salty winds and touch the burning sand. What is so wrong with your voice that makes you not speak it. What are you so afraid of , I will never understand. Trapped within your perfect shades of beige, grey and crimson, you don’t realize that you are your own prisoner. The incessant need to look, walk and dress perfect, the duty to echo every thought that visits your ear, and mute the ones coming straight from your sparkling mind, this is nothing but your own treachery. You have set for yourself this whimsical death sentence.
I wonder if you’ll ever set yourself free. I wonder if I’ll ever tire, give up, rest my head on your shoulder as we watch the world pass by from behind black velvet drapes, always perfectly drawn.