Tree Trunks, Red Rain, and Plastic Masquerades


I wear a cross upon my neck. In the same way that mine hangs from its silver chain, his hung, suspended on a red cord when he kissed me. I was pressed against a tree trunk, and the hard, twisted knots and raw bark scraped against my pale skin. For a long while, a terrifying numbness overwhelmed me. It had been both wrong and freeing in the same heart-racing moments. It was wrong because he knew his power over me. It was wrong because he knew a corrupt heart. It was wrong because that angry and graceless kiss had not been of love. And because it had not been of love, it was wrong because the cross which dangled from his neck had no meaning. Yet, despite all of its wrongness, that kiss had been transforming. Certainly, I had known sorrow, desire, and dishonesty before it-but until that kiss, they were distant feelings shrouded heavily in the naivety of youth. In collapsing these oppressive walls of lamb-like innocence, I felt a crashing wave of adrenaline and freedom. In shattering everything I had been taught, everything that was mundane and familiar, and everything I had believed without a trace of doubt, I found an unchartered and treacherous-yet beautifully enlightening new sense of the world.  
I cling to my nightmares because they transform into dreams. As I am welcomed by the motherly embrace of slumber, I am confronted by a familiar scene: a large field of darkened and trampled wheat, wine-colored skies, and the eerie, hollow whisper of a lost wind. Faraway in the center of the field lays a dark form that is barely visible. I begin to sprint, running as fast as I can towards the crumpled, pathetic figure sprawled across the bare earth. I’ve lost control of my legs-they are moving on their own accord, running, always running, even as the blades of wheat take turns slicing into my bare feet. I stop. Reaching the figure, I realize I no longer want to see it. But it’s too late, and my legs have carried me all the way. Lying in a grotesque position, his limbs are twisted and skewed. My knees give way to the ground as I take the red-soaked dirt between my old, tired fingers. My heart weeps. But suddenly, the lone wind finds its brothers, and the air is no longer filled with his lonely murmur. The dark red skies give way, and a gray, yet hopeful sky enters. From dirty clouds the crimson drops fall down, leaving cooling splashes on my upturned hands and face. The wind has returned with its brethren, and together, they whisper a tuneless melody in my ears. When I look down, the body of my friend has vanished, and grief grudgingly releases its suffocating grip on my heart. In my mind I see his face. I don’t see us walking to the pizzeria at the corner. I don’t picture us playing together as kids, and I don’t try to imagine us talking on the phone. Instead, all I see-and want to see, is his smiling, beautiful, radiant face.
Lastly, I carry a mask. Attending a daily masquerade, I slip it in place every morning when I wake. I smile easily with the mask on, but the smile that appears is an imposturous shadow of what lays beneath. All around me, others wear the shiny, hard, plastic pieces. In our own terror we hide behind cold, pasted-on veneers, dancing together in the strange and monotonous rhythm of delusion. Our hands are clasped, locked stiffly in embrace with our partners. But our hands are numb, and the touch remains unfelt. We are afraid. When we are alone however, our masks slip away, and they are replaced by something unadulterated and pure. The mechanical dance changes its harsh tempo, and slows to the beating of the heart. Alone, we can dance without the chains of our masks, as free and wild as truth itself.