Masquerade

There you are, standing in your own doorway,

barefoot and bereft of hat,

crow-black hair shaved close to olive skin –

this is the real you, a velvet vision,

someone for me to remember when the mask goes on.

Even I reach for a swipe of dark artifice

around eyes as green as the forest,

armour against a new dawn, performing the same dance,

the hiding of our true selves,

until the day we discard these glittering masks

and kick off our glass shoes.

The glittering lights of the Bright Nights display captured on our favourite inner trail in Stanley Park (Vancouver, B.C.).