Beauty

My name is Beauty.

I live in the corner of your lips, the salt of your tears and the swing of your hips. I am a curse and a blessing.

I am the truth and the lie. I am the pleasure and I am the pain.

Hate me. Threaten me. I will still be who I am.

Invoke me and banish me. Shout at me and hurt me. I will come and I will go, in my own precious time. 

I have tumbled empires and haunted kings. I have won battles and defeated sorcerers.
I am the face that launched a thousand ships.

Sit with me a while, shrink in the presence of my unattainable perfection.

Try to imitate my flawless lines, my effortless splendour.

You will fail.

Every moment you spend with me I will chip away at every facet of your self-confidence.

You will want to change everything about your uneven forehead, your average nose and your thin lips.

My every gesture will make you wince, my smile will blind you like the sparkling of a million white diamonds frosted with sand.

Listen to your own voice grate over the clumsy vocabulary you hold most dear whilst my every word oozes with sincerity, drips with intrigue and exudes hidden meaning.

Just because we are no longer talking it doesn’t mean I will not haunt you.

I am the unreflectable reflection. I am the unconquerable conqueror. I am the untransformable transformation.

I am the final, perfect, metamorphosis of the degradation of your soul.

I can invade every one of your senses.

Hear me in the soundless whisper.

See me in the limitless sky.

Taste me in the breath of the wind.

Smell me in the summer rain.

Feel me strangling the chords of your heart.

Snapping them one by one.

I am the thief that never gets caught.

I am the adulterer that never gets punished.

I am the murderer who walks out free.

And I will take everything from you.

He will glimpse me from the corner of his eye and crawl into my infinite web.

The web that is spun with the light of a thousand stars and the blood of a million martyrs.

Martyrs that have died, for me.

I will trap him with promises that have already been broken and love that has already been denied.

He will follow me to the mouth of the Euphrates and the corner of the Dog Star.

He will always choose me.

I will capture your friends and your enemies.

They will follow me like an army of faithful crusaders, worshipping me like a goddess.

They will each in turn betray the one closest to their soul in order to bask for a moment in the glory of my light.

But it is a light that burns and dies as fast as it is set ablaze.

It is a false light, an illusion, a shadow.

It is cold and I am lonely, so lonely.

I did not choose this life.

The pain I cause is effortless, natural and unavoidable.

I try to hide behind the windows of the world but I am everywhere.

The master painter holds me in the tip of his brush, in the oil of his canvas.

The writer imprisons me in the ink of his pen and the white of his paper.

The violinist traps me in the strings of his bow and the rhythm of his fingers.

I am even present in your tears as I tear away everything that is dear to you.

But they fall into the eternal ocean of my infamy and I hardly notice them.

They mean nothing to me. 

The dreamlike nightmare.

The nightmarish dream.

Ephemeral yet everlasting.

I am all there is, love does not exist.

Beauty poisons.

Beauty scars.

Beauty kills.

Beauty dies.

I am Beauty and Beauty never lies.

By Annabel Church