Secret Identity

Contributor: JD DeHart

- -
No one has to be reminded
to wear a mask or make up a vigilante
pseudonym. It comes natural.

We are all performers.

No one has to pause and invent
stage directions. The tap dance has
begun. We are at the third repeat
of the chorus by now. God, how I wish
I had taken some lessons first.

In the absence of an audience, we
practice lines, listening to them bounce
off the walls. Projecting a polished
self, we hide the secret of obvious
frailty and isolation.

The words of a wise old man I know:
We are all just people playing our part,
trying not to look like fools in this phase,
or to wrap it in cliché: We fake it
‘til we make it. Whatever it is we are making.


- - -