Pressing from every side.
The chains of oppression are tight.
What do they do when fears coincide.
They can't make up their mind.
They say first you should act better.
Then they think you should dress better.
When you've done that, you should speak better.
And of course your spirituality is too low.
When you've appeased the lions with these,
pasting plastic pieces into a cracked picture
that vaguely resembles your face when you started,
you won't be able to recognize yourself in old pictures.
You'll see the heavy makeup, short skirts, dazzling crosses, and sparkling clean mouth,
and you'll feel like Barbie.
Disjointed, unproportional, yet barely fitting in.
You'll see yourself and think you've made a lot of progress.
But is it really progress? Yes, you've come a long way.
But you've come further back into oppression.
Even more cracks appear in the paper mache mask
and your bittersweet, genuine, unattractive tears slip through.
You hack through the mask line by line
Each separation makes the mask crack a little more.
As the mask crumbles to the floor, it takes you with it.
To get through the sea of something that wasn't really you,
You lost yourself.
