But Her Features

But her features were falling off her face and her lap was sliding off her legs and her voice shifted, as if the ground were dropping away, and she slipped inside her skin a little, as if the mask were too big, and the air rippled with voices and the clatter of clean plates and the clink of glasses, To your health! No, to yours! and the laughter sounded televised and the music blared with an oppressive pulse, as if a surgeon had opened up the room with a pair of shears and its heart were thumping out the beat, while ballad after ballad beamed back from the wayward 90s, and her glasses slid to the floor and the bartender stepped on them without a word, and the air grew dark, as if she had entered a tunnel, but it was only night surrounding her, as if she had been hunted down, as if night had been waiting there all day, just around the corner, and that smile she flashed at the bartender over the lemons and the limes, why did it seem so painful and how could it seem so genuine?