RDP Wednesday – CLOWN

 

 

When I was little

Circus clowns held no fear for me-

even though I was sure that the face under the greasepaint

and the body hidden inside of the  silly clothes

the hands enclosed in gloves

are all skeletal

and those brittle bones are held together

with crumbling layers of dusty leathery dried skin and thick, pinguid makeup.

 

The circus clowns want to make you laugh, to make you laugh loud and hysterically

so as to hide it when you started screaming.

 

It works. It always does. I was sure of it.

Even as a child.

 

Clowns, especially circus clowns held no fear for me,

I know what is under the makeup, inside of the clothes what makes them

laugh and scream

in joy

with their mouths wide open and their eyes always locked on that space between your

chin and collar bone while holding

a bunch of wilted paper flowers in one hand and a  rubber chicken in the other.

 

What scares me and what always will is the Magician’s Assistant.

 

She was always

wearing a wide smile painted on her mouth in blood red lipstick,

and she kept on smiling

no matter how many times she was  cut in half

locked in an iron maiden and had spikes driven into her head and chest and legs

her smile never changed and she never flinched or blinked

as she disappeared into oblivion in a puff of smoke, or floated  ghostlike through the air.

 

The Magician’s  assistant always came back with

a wide smile painted on her mouth

in blood red lipstick.

I was terrified of her because I saw her

dying over and over again

and she kept coming

back.

She never stayed dead.

No matter how many times they killed her.