She’s wearing it again.
Hiding behind its porcelain green glare like some
righteous shield.
He wants so desperately to just peel it off her face
that he cuts off his own.

He’d lie and smile.
Show off his new mask and
Crack a joke about the broken pencil, a
pointless **** poor flavor of humor
reminding them where they went wrong.

She wouldn’t notice anyway;
Too excessively engaged with the
idea of a lonely low-priced studio.

He knows this, and remains perched in silence
like a mute bird. Staring off into space
and recounting mistakes;
Feeling the colorless
truth bleed from the corners of grooved eyes
down to the edges of blue lips
that he so regrets unveiling.

Knock knock
Who’s there?
The boy lying
in ambush with a camera,
pining to dig up shiny smiles of the past.
How they laughed at such jokes.