I bear a face that would not want to recognise itself it is not pleasing nor pleasant it can no longer smile nor laugh at your jokes cry along with your suffering my cheeks once jocular are now bereft of colour cold hearted to the affectionate brush of a hand for a while on the surface I look exactly the same but slowly their is an altered state there is a smell about me of a form being eaten away from within a body corrupted inside to out slowly breaching the chill flesh drained of blood translucent and whitening all the signifiers of my former essence these deserted portraits of what was once a gratified soul I am not the face you'd wish to recognise the body the mind the heart and spirit that you may have once romanced that face is now impassively a loveless one a joyless one distressing to be onlooker of one you would not take a selfie of unless you we're rather ghoulish with no respect for the dignity of repose of me ensconced upon my catafalque that final divorce from all affection all memory all you may have once associated with me given my former outline is erased like a chalk drawing in the rain that brief incident of weather when I still contained a vibrancy alive to the precious gift of it all, of friendship a bond to my present state that has been permanently sundered given up to who knows where from whence it can never be reclaimed or re-membered through the face for what you now see is and is not me it bears an unpalatable truth within the ruby cluster of bruises around the sunken sockets and the rictus grin of flaring lips what you imagine still as me always was this necessary fiction, a function of practicality, a useful baroque phantasm that got us through the unfolding exposition of a rather low key drama series where we once tried to ride bare back on the pure bright horse of love.
Written by Stephen Lumb
June 2024
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