I close my eyes and envision a world,

perfect at a glance,

full of wonder, color, vibrance,

everyone is happy,

children playing, mothers cooking, fathers working happily,

but when i probe deeper,

deeper into the multi-layered world of my imagining,

the veil that covers it slips away,

the trueness revealed,

the wonder is gone, replaced by a dull redundancy,

the once vibrant colors are a dreary gray,

not a sharp contrasting black and white,

but a hazy, shapeless gray,

the smiles I percieved were in truth frowns,

misjudged by my high point of view,

mothers slave over hot stoves,

burning themselves with hot grease,

fathers are trudging to and from building to building,

enduring the constant droll of life,

this is the actual world i saw,

covered by the beautiful veil,

crafted by the masks worn by the inhabitants

-shell