Lie in bed
Child
Lest what stands beyond threshold
Threatens calm
Waking to the sound of winter silence
Clutching at inanimate objects
The seen friends who do not reply
Delve deeper into the mind
Where disturbance is held away
By merciful imagination
How long can a child
Pretend
And make-believe?
The sounds of fighting through the walls
Even the deaf hear
The crack in plaster grows wider
Each day carpet higher
Till jungle swallows child
Alone
Her own words ingrowing
Dance when no one is looking
For nobody did
Turned faces absentees
Hunger for attention
At first an annoying shame-faced thing
Then the end of longing
Acceptance
You placed me in a room of my own and said
Thrive
I did not
Instead
Half of me turned into plaster and chipboard and carpet fibers
And half climbed out windows and got lost
Letting her feathers be plucked early
By stranger fondling hands and false words
Prophet’s without prophecy
Girls born without reason
Growing in one ache
The silence their lover and their torment
Sliced in half
One, a creature straining to survive herself
One the albatross of finely dressed humans
Absenting themselves from responsibility
She says
You damned me
You shut me up
You expected me to thrive and grow in darkness and coal
As you closed the door and said entertain yourself
She switched the camera on and let them come one by one
Watch her fall beneath the lights
Mayhap dancer, mayhap pornographer
No words escape her
She moves her pain
Above you like light streaming down
Pure and broken into prisms