FebulousFebruary 2025: Lost and Found

THE SOCIAL MASK March 86/rev 2022

Today I met a friend, 

– once close, some decade and a half ago.

Nervous though I was at what I knew

Yet what became revealed seemed something wholly unfamiliar.

On the outside?  Very much the same

(Though maybe emphasised a little more):

Heavy bovine features

-Back then I would never have used that word, or thought –

Yet so much like her mother’s

Whose death caused us this strained reunioned meet.

And whose likeness I’d never previously discerned.

No extra weight, surprisingly,

 as clearly there’s a genetic  inclination that’s built in.

• (How inner fears so generate suspicion)!

Hair, much the same in length and cut, 

Though so much blonder now,

And a face now painted 

To a line-free glaze

that

 made me wonder what was being masked beneath.

So strange that this oddly fitting girl that I once new

had grown to match the glamour of a Peggy Lee.

But what was there beneath? The sentiments, the feelings, the politely muted anger towards me?

Shielding behind my child, used as a screen,

I peered and peeked,

And was discomforted at what I think I saw…

The platitudes abounded,

With posturings and posings –

My erstwhile friend resembled something like a- player queen;

Sympathy was entitled, and pain and loss 

 were owned, eked out …and seemingly enjoyed.?

*       *       *

It took some years of input to see again beneath the mask,

Yet so, in time, we managed a closer if more distanced intimacy.

Ian Munday,  LLanbrynmair, Wales