I am so pleading because I am not to blame. Do understand, I am merely an instrument of other people’s desires and commands. It happens through me, this unceasing cascade of narcissism, but I am just the medium. Do understand.

I am tired. I have to be everywhere.

I am tired. I have to be at the ready all the time.

I am tired. I am told it is 18 hours each day and there are no holidays.

I am tired. Because I am always looking at him.

I am tired. Because he is always looking at me. He knows the secret. He knows exactly where I am at any time.

I am tired. I have never been so closely pursued.

I am tired. Because they call me so many names. They mock at my real name. My parents called me by a name I loved. They gave me many names, lovely ones. I would appear with my many and varied names in all sorts of locales — landscapes, luxury journals, lavish hands. And then I was shanghaied to my current purposes and given this shoddy nomenclature, even more shoddy because it pretended to be the smart: Kaymra (Hidden). Batao. Beizzati.

I am tired. What am I not tired of ? Most of all I am tired of that face which never seems to tire of either itself or me. Always there, forever. Can’t imagine how the face manages to be the face all the time. Must cost a bob or two to look like that all the time. Don’t you go believing all that balderdash about faces shining because the sweat of honest labours have been rubbed into them and a glow achieved. We know how this glow-show comes, it comes from going glam-sham. Not now and then, not often, not when required, but all the time, relentless glam-sham for relentless glow-show.

I am tired just to look at it and what it must take. What it must take to be on the other side of me, you know.

I am tired just being looked into. I sometimes wonder why there are no holes all over me yet because I have been constantly bored into. Perhaps the holes are in the way. Perhaps there will be one large enough for me to fall into and forever vanish. Or become in the real sense Kaymra Hidden.

I am tired or remaining hidden. But that’s probably the idea. They gave me a bad name and hanged me by convenient necks. I am meant to be secret but I am not so well kept. I will never become the real thing.

Look at me

Say what you see

If you see me

Go merry you be.