Dark bows perch at the top of her head

and chipped fingernails dig into the flesh of her thigh

Grit teeth make her jaw hurt

because realistically

her anger can only be subdued this way

she is seduced by dark rooms and running away from responsibility

She is adorned with rusted chains

to wrap herself warm

she is a maze

one they use to test mice in

with failed experiments

written all over her

cracks in her armor

chunks of iron and steel removed from her chest plate

how does she smile

with those drained light bulbs she call teeth?

how does she breathe?

with those two furnaces she calls lungs?

how does she see sunlight and act like it hasn’t burnt?

like she isn’t scalded by the snooze of her alarm lock?

the short answer?

she doesn't

the long answer?

she is reaching toward the horizons like they have some soft of symbolic meaning

like they are telling her she’s atlas

holding the weight of the sky on her shoulders

but no

she is just a tangle of thorn bushes that hasn’t learned that the pricks of her thorns hurt others also.