The jester keeps a mirror
where his face should be.
A little moon of silver,
a polished wound,
a sliver of winter
he carries beneath his tongue.
He wears bells around his wrists
so no one hears the trembling.
He wears bells around his ankles
so even his sorrow
must arrive dancing.
He paints a smile across his mouth
and calls it armour.
He paints his eyelids with midnight
and calls it sleep.
He paints a little sun on his cheek
and spends the day
pretending not to freeze.
At court,
he is a match struck against the dark.
At court,
he is the moth dressed as a flame.
At court,
he is the only knife
allowed to sing.
They ask him for laughter,
so he gives them his teeth.
They ask him for spectacle,
so he gives them his shadow.
They ask him for truth,
so he wraps it in velvet,
places a crown upon its head,
and teaches it to juggle.
He speaks in riddles
because plain words
have always been too sharp
for royal hands.
He calls the throne
a gilded coffin
that has forgotten how to close.
He calls the crown
a halo made from hunger.
He calls the banquet
a mouth with no bottom,
a mouth that swallows
and swallows
and swallows
until even the moon
looks like something edible.
They laugh.
Of course they laugh.
Laughter is the velvet curtain
drawn across a blade.
Laughter is the bell
hung around the neck of truth
so no one notices
it is screaming.
And the jester bows.
He bows until his spine
becomes a question mark.
He bows until his shadow
looks like another man
trying to escape him.
He bows because a jester
must always appear delighted
to be alive.
At midnight,
the palace becomes a carcass
picked clean of music.
The chandeliers hang overhead
like constellations
that have forgotten their stars.
The jester removes his bells.
One by one.
Silence falls from him
like feathers from a dying bird.
Then the paint comes away.
Then the smile.
Then the borrowed face.
And beneath them—
nothing that the court
would recognise as beautiful.
Only the mirror.
Only the mirror,
still waiting where his face should be.
He looks into it
and finds a hundred jesters staring back:
the fool,
the liar,
the witness,
the orphaned god,
each wearing the same smile,
each holding the same little moon,
each wondering
whether the costume was ever cloth
or merely another word
for skin.
By morning,
the bells return.
The paint dries.
The court assembles.
And the jester steps forward,
a little apocalypse
in motley,
a wound taught to dance,
a funeral dressed as a carnival.
Someone throws a coin.
He catches it between two fingers.
He smiles.
He bows.
And somewhere beneath the floorboards,
something ancient
and merciless
begins to laugh.