The age of decay, she hears their text on her skin.
Their voices galloping across the mass of her texture.
She touches what is hers, not to give away.
Looking at what she can’t feel.
Her face under scrutiny, light lands badly on her valleys and features.
Her mind a massacring instrument.
Her tears disappearing beneath the make-up clouds.
Integrated in the hidden shadows of her face.
Sydelle Edelie refuses to acknowledge the hours she spends in front of mirrors.
Adjusting, readjusting, everything is wrong, nothing holds as she grows old.
Her daughters watching her from behind the frame, her back, her gaze.
The mistreatment against the proper self.
The body a persona, the voice a traveller, high and low, the face a puppet bowing to taste.
Most of the time the daughters don’t know who their mother really is.
The masquerade a talent misused.
All the wrong reasons on her face.
Mother weeps in front of her self-image as she wipes the colours off.
The hand afraid of the annihilating gesture that took hours.
Mother never reaches perfection, the number of mirrors grows.
Mother has a million hands and eyes.
Sydelle Edelie, the sculptress, chiselling her features, arresting her character.
As the mother grows older she ought to become wiser.
The daughters want to learn, she has so many stories to tell when she drops the brush.
Sydelle Edelie’s mirror image brands itself on her daughters’ brains.
It never smiles in harmony, disagreement blankets the glacial stare.
The mother is looking for things to cover, things to mould.
She never stops hunting.
Her cheeks blushed from the battlefield apparatus.
It is a privilege to grow old.
Sydelle Edelie sees death when she looks at herself.
The daughters are confused; they see her as a wondrous artist.
They end up on the reflecting surface.
The mother’s face nude, her eyes in tears, her lips trying to withstand the pressure.
The daughters recognise her and smile into the mirror.
Love occurs and shatters the glass to reveal the truth.
Sydelle Edelie, the giver of life, smiles at her own image as she sees herself in her
Daughters’ proud features, hugs her body and feels that she is very much alive.
Croque-Melpomene 