The Persona

A name was chosen, a life designed,

An age selected, just misaligned.

Should she be jolly? Should she be cruel?

A class clown? Or one who breaks the rule?

A background drafted, rehearsed with care,

Stories woven out of air.

Because if I slip, if I forget,

They’ll see the truth. They won’t forget.

This persona, why did I make her live?

I’m not even sure what she’s meant to give.

But it’s easier, sometimes, to hide inside

A borrowed smile I let decide.

The real me has a role to play,

Pinned down by what they always say.

But this new girl, they don’t yet know.

She’s blank, unjudged. She’s free to grow.

She has a past, a made-up tale:

A broken heart, a love gone stale.

A boyfriend who never texts or calls,

A story I made just to feel at all.

And when I speak, I speak as her

Less trembling voice, more practiced blur.

But what if one day masks collapse?

Will they recoil or perhaps

Ask me why I had to lie,

Why I built a truth that passed them by?

Will they judge the lonely me

Who found a voice behind a screen?

Or maybe… they’ll understand too well

That sometimes we lie, just not to tell

The parts of us no one can see

The hidden roots of who we used to be.

It starts so small,

A crack in the tale, a stumble, a stall.

A friend asks twice, and I forget

Which lie I told, which name I met.

The details blur, the timelines bend,

The boyfriend vanishes, I can’t pretend.

My stories clash, their brows begin

To furrow deep, suspicion within.

They scroll back through old replies,

Patterns missed now sharpened eyes.

Why did she say her mom was gone,

Then speak of calls just last month on?

One asks directly. My screen goes cold.

The truth, too brittle, too heavy to hold.

The smile I wore begins to break,

Crushed beneath the weight of fake.

I type a joke to brush it by,

But something trembles in the lie.

They say, “You’re not who you claim to be.”

And just like that, they start to leave.

The silence hurts more than the blame,

More than being caught at the game.

It’s the sudden shift, from known to ghost,

From one of many, to hated most.

Some block me.

Some laugh.

Some just fade.

And all that’s left is what I made:

A hollow shell, a story’s wreck,

A name I gave now wrapped ‘round my neck.

No one calls me by the mask,

And no one asks the questions I’d hoped they’d ask.

Like: Why’d you do it? Were you that alone?

Did your own skin feel like a prison, a stone?

Was it easier to be someone new,

Than to let them know the realest you?

But no one asks.

And I don’t speak.

I scroll through chats I used to keep.

A thousand lines, a thousand scenes,

All vanished now like fading dreams.

This is the cost, the bitter end:

To lose both mask and your pretend.

But worse than losing who you played

Is knowing no one ever stayed

For who you really are beneath

The smile, the scripts, the silent grief.

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