Hollow Frame

In the depths of my two scorching eyes, lined with neon-winged despair,

I confront the grotesque reflection staring back from a modern IKEA mirror.

A visage twisted in disgust, my soul cackles—

the sound a screech that tears at my eardrums like a banshee's wail.

My manicured nails turn the pages of Vanity Fair,

but my rotten brain erupts,

oozing poison into the corridors of my mind,

slowly succumbing to its own malignant grasp.

What horror has befallen my once-collagen-rich skin,

now melting like a black candle,

withered beneath the flash of unlit cameras,

its glory consumed by the shadows of artificiality?

My houseplants stand as grave markers of neglect,

witnesses to the decay that consumes me whole.

My cats have fled to the wild,

their nocturnal cries echoing my shame,

for I forgot to nourish their longing with affection.

Who am I on this moonless Halloween night in Las Vegas,

a lonely grandmother at thirty-one,

haunted by the specter of a life misled,

dying in this garish masquerade?