Masked

I walked inside the empty castle, as dark as it was, but I had a torch. The flame flickered, the light reflected against my face, but I wasn't sure what was there anymore.

I reached the first set of words engraved on the wall, as if it was left there for me.

“Clowns wear a face that's painted intentionally on them so they appear to be happy or sad. What kind of mask are you wearing today?”
- Anonymous

It felt as if I had read the words before, in a life I lived before this one. But the only difference was, I hadn't died in between.

“The play is done; the curtain drops,

Slow falling to the prompter's bell

A moment yet the actor stops

And looks around to say farewell.

It is an irksome word and task:

And when he's laughed and said his say,

He shows, as he removes the mask,

A face that's anything but gay.”
-William Makepeace Thackeray

After the curtain did fall, when I had played my part, I stepped back inside the real me.

Miserable, weak, and not alive anymore. But the only question without an answer is - why?

“He who wears a mask cannot see within himself.”
- Anonymous

I walked further along the empty castle, as dark as it was. I had a torch, and the light fell across my face, but I wasn't sure what was there anymore.

“Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.”
- William Somerset Maugham

~~

"I've had people worry 'bout this mask before,

and what I've been wearing it for

but whenever I've let go off it, I've

found no one to recognize me anymore."
- Danish Arif