Self-portrait

A self portrait is a lie.
A canvas, primed with the way you see me and touched with a brush dipped in only what I want you to know.
Steadied on a stained easel built by hurt, I make a simple stroke then I wipe the rest on my shirt.
It's not really the real me but who you want me to be.
A truly irrediscent, fluctuating, piece of a piece of a puzzle that I don't think that I will ever complete.
So for my sake, I'm only painting my face and not the arms that pull me back into the place I escaped.
You've never seen the first sketch.
The sketchy thoughts I erased and replaced with something a little more pleasing to the eye.
Easily to be defined in the back of your mind, it hides behind layers  of "I try" and "I'm fine" and you buy it with packaging that heals in due time.
A box that can't think outside of itself.
With a price tag that makes you see outside of your wealth.
It's closed up like a murderous smile and taped down, bitter like a tear from a motherless child who was told that he has lessons that will never be learned.
A recorder that holds confessions that will never be heard, yet if I said you didn't know me you would find it obsurd like a spaceship built so that it'll never leave earth.
Then it's framed and hung up on my every word.
A quick glance that's recieved but is never returned.
A self portait is a lie that I'm not sure I can tell.
A masterpiece painting that I'm not ready to sell.