Semblance

Listen carefully to what I'm about to say:
Wake up.
Open your eyes.
Shut up.
Force to hear.
Remember.
Don't come back.
Looking in the mirror, she sees flesh covering a body made up of layers upon layers of complexities constructed delicately but skillfully, to withhold all sorts of weather: rejections, compliments, verbal vomit of emotion, and especially love.
To get dressed in the morning is a challenge. She goes to the closet and pulls out her favorite pair of facades; a shade of humor and friendliness will do the trick. All the girls will soon follow the trend.
Next we have a nice-fitted ego, not too big and not too small. It's just the right size. Pulling that over her head, and yanking her arms through it, she looks into the mirror again - near perfection.
But she cannot leave the house without her fake smile, and without fixing up her attitude with a spray of a false sense of security. It smells like conceit, but it hardens like self-loathing. She plans to buy a better brand.
Of course, she cannot step one foot into the outside world without her war paint. It's essential in attracting the shallow, the inconsiderately flambouyant mannequins that will stick it out to the limit. She lathers on reserve over her whole face, but not too much. To avoid a caked face, she puts just enough to cover her true colors.
The finishing touch, bitterness on her lips? She contemplates for a bit, staring at it and at her reflection. With all the dressing up she did, she can't make her mind about this last minor detail that could make or break her words. She considers another hue, of white lies and a hint of obliviousness. But then, she hears sees feels a smoke crawling in under her door, and through the window.
She hears a voice between the lines: wake up.
She sees a figure gesture: open your eyes.
She feels a presence suggesting: shut up.
She hears her mother say between the lines: Force to hear.
She sees her best friend gesture: remember.
She feels her peers suggest: don't come back.
Then she understands; then she understands to strip herself of all the hard work she did to become, and to appear.
She sets her clothes, her make-up aside. That's enough for today.