The Mask I Wear Too Well

Masking feels like smiling with my teeth clenched behind it. Like becoming softer, smaller, easier, so no one has to trip over the sharp parts of me. I study the room like it is a test I was never taught how to pass. How loud should I laugh? How long should I look? Where do my hands go? Is my face doing the right thing? Am I too much yet? I fold myself into acceptable shapes, tuck my stims under my ribs, swallow the words that come out wrong, sand down my edges until I cannot tell where I end and the performance begins. People call me easy to be around when I am disappearing politely. They say I seem fine because I have learned how to bleed quietly under pretty lighting. But the mask is heavy. It leaves bruises no one can see. By the end of the day, I am not tired. I am emptied. Like I spent every hour holding my breath inside someone else’s body. And when I finally come home, when the door closes, when there is no one left to convince, I fall apart like a costume dropped to the floor, and wonder if anyone would still love me if I stopped being so carefully translated.