Lost

Perform

Slip into the costume made to flatter this plastic bodily image you have created,
Slide on the performance shoes.
Adjust the hair and makeup to mirror everyone else's,
Fit in here the way you have desperately tried to in so many other places.
Do not feel sick at the smell of the hairspray that used to entice you.
Warm up the limbs that didn't want to leave the safety of bed this morning,
Walk across the way to the back door of the building, find yourself waiting sidestage.
Try to push away the thought that you cannot breathe,
Forget that the outfit feels like it's strangling you, because it fit this morning.
Pay attention, the music has stopped and the lights have gone out.
Take your position like you have practiced so many times over,
Pay no mind to the fact that this feels so much more uncomfortable
Than the countless times in the past when you reveled in it.
Ignore the overwhelming sensation that this is not who you are anymore,
Because if you admit that, you must submit to the realization that you are nobody now,
A shell of the old you that once enjoyed this, a hollow human being.
Nobody watching from the darkness in front of you cares about that,
So put on that forged smile,
Give them the show they came to see.