I feel as if I am buried alive

Yet I smile and respond with "fine, thank you"

I have been appropriately conditioned,

like fine leather

That no one wants to hear the painful truth.

An essential part of me, a limb

A constituent of my earthly being

Has been violently amputated.

Yet I laugh at the mediocre conversations

A verbal splash in a shallow puddle

Pretending to be a player of the words

That have no meaning.

My heart has been ripped from my bosom

No benevolence granted

No explanations – No apologies

Only cataclysmic pain

Only agony

No anesthesia remains, just the bitter pain.

Yet I wear the mask

Day to Day.

Pretending I fit in

But really I’m a foreigner to this new land

An alien language they speak.

And as I attempt to translate the words

Still, they mean nothing to me.

Sequestered in the mask

They hear not the music I dance to

Nor the words I speak

Nor the pain I echo

Nor the native language of my eyes

They will never really know me,

Hiding behind the mask.

(From the book "Dear Cheyenne")