Eyes of the Beholder

It looks like this

Lanterns in the glass reflection

Vines creeping up the archway

True and inevitable

If only you let them be

I pick off all my nail polish

An old unbreakable habit 

Start talking about art

Aren’t we all tortured souls?

There is so many stories about

An artist being broken

Like it is only them who hurt somehow

A smoky sky can cause

Sorrow as much as a loss some days

It only separates an artist from what

We really are

Another person 

Just living

Telling stories

I speak of the two versions of Achilles

One drowned in magic as a babe

Bulky and brute and invincible

The second born with magic in his veins

Willowy and young

The epitome of an elegant death

And who are we to know which

Is true of him

We were not there

We have only the words of strangers

Some translating

Some long

Long gone to dust

We will never know the whole truth

I look up to the stars

Like Orion there must be 

A constellation for Achilles somewhere

And aloud I say

“What is art in the eyes of the beholder?

As they will never truly know what

My stories mean to me

I will never know what 

They truly think of my words”

Isn’t that the strangest?