I’m experiencing a sadness I’ve never felt before.
It’s a distance that I can’t gap if I try.
I wonder why.
I dance around bushes like a 5-year-old,
like the lies I’ve told;
Like a chant in the schoolyard,
the radio buzzes on and on,
remembering times so long gone,
dreams that have flown.
My child has outgrown my body.
The answer is: I need a way out of it.
The skin needs peeled away,
the bone crushed to pieces,
veins dried to dust.
A silhouette, in the night, emerges:
my soul, my me–the real me–
invisible to anyone who ever mattered.
Gone.
All words shattered
against red brick walls,
paintings of longing, of dreams.
My screams unheard,
no lips to form words;
the pen has run dry, no ink;
what I think is numbed:
no voice, no performance, no applause.
The answer is: I need out of this.
So I pick up my pen
and escape like smoke
from heavy steel cuffs,
a dungeon damsel
locked up and stuff.
Like a peasant girl awaiting her prince:
Been fucked, but I’m still a virgin.
Still waiting for all those adventures,
the dangers,
the fixtures on a marble mantel.
Chandeliers and sconces
reflected in mirrors down a long hall,
sheer white curtains dance,
interrupting the path in this cave.
I feel brave,
I feel free,
like I want to know what’s inside of me.
He calls from behind a wooden door
as heavy as a thousand planets,
cracked enough to breathe.
The real answer is
this tiny scream lumped in my throat,
this whimper for fantasy.
