Paper Stage

In our fiction we have found another meaning,

Persona purified upon the page,

Feeding lines to lovers, deleting where we wish,

Camouflaged emotions, love to rage.

Subterfuge by any other standard,

Masks and costumes donned, let play commence,

Poetry, prose enacted, upon a paper stage,

Imagined intervals to build suspense.

Little drops of us from side to centre,

Courtesies in character full-blown,

Feed the words, imbue them, reality suspend,

Alter-egos populate, seeds sown

From a word or two, our person may be pleasing

Or one dastardly who mocks at every turn,

A subtle slice of sandwich’d, we and he combined,

Embodiment of bits of us, new formed.