Reflected herself, she stares into the glass finding herself as transparent as its surface, her flaws glare back at her revealed, free from oppression. Her face bears no smile but the deep wrinkles beside her lips are visible still; canyons that are reflected beside the shallowness of her green gaze that longs to be blue, the waves of hair that are dying to be hung straight, the sloping point of a nose wishing to recede further into her mirrored profile. She sits before the vanity, home to the cosmetic residues and sedating medicines that she counts on to brighten her cheeks – pale as silence – with joyful colors of masquerade. She paints on her mask of self-acceptance, blushes of satisfaction applied by the soft strokes of her brush until the spots brown as the Rio waters that empty into the gulf fade away; the freckled constellations no longer dirtying her chin nor flecking her neck. She colors her lips red. Her artfully made up eyes now stare deeper into the glass finding an endless tunnel before her, a sealed up cube that closes her in and shackles her to feelings of hopelessness and hurt which are buried deep beneath her flash of blinding teeth. She sees her own cast out demons, the flaws that plague the existence of mankind, the bastardized troubadours that sing songs of yearning; the reality that is revealed by one fallen tear – a blemish on the made up face of pretend perfection, a stain on the heart of a hopeless wanderer, a sharp shard of tainted glass that digs and cuts away what she refuses to see, herself reflected.