Stage of life.I paint my lips crimson— a smile stitched with invisible thread, while the scar beneath my ribs hums a melody only I can hear. The stage is set with halogen lights, so bright they bleach the shadows where my grief curls like a sleeping child, small, forgotten, but still breathing. I pirouette in borrowed grace, each step a sonnet, each glance a verse— the audience sighs, mistaking the tremor in my hands for passion, not the aftershock of a wound I refuse to name. Oh, the art of vanishing in plain sight-- how the body becomes both the blade and the sheath.At curtain call, they throw roses, their petals soft as apologies I’ll never receive. I bow low, lower, until my spine becom…