genre

I am that certain stranger, sighted from across a dreaming sea. I am that mirror, the worn skins of the familiar. For a moment we trade places and become forever lost to the other, meaning another name for mistake. That art of noting aloud the way a paintings eyes seem to follow. That gift of always guessing just a little at a time, a whole long desert framed for a moment in ascent. That suppleness that so beguiles, each notion a slow embrace.

I am never long lost to artifice, for a pleasing scamming of the view. A fondness for the sort of lies that always follow good intentions. Every stretch an open invitation, an unbounded promise of further delights too familiar to number. A dash or a dance, this guileless masquerade of full disclosure, this cloture of glamor and feint. This reason in the way things hang, painted in light and ink.

You are always knowing that moment before the whole illusion bursts. You see just when to look away, poised to be readily happy for the worst. The smile you wear always the opposite of the mood you bear with-in. You tell the world each thing you're seeing and how that seeing suits. All your reactions a realization of the inevitable, a cross bourn because it was all the world left. The halo around every shadow, every bluff called out.