A Puppet And A Living Corpse
Location
A thousand yellow pairs of eyes
Peer into mine
With every year of life that passes
The s chained to my wrists
t
r
i
n
g
s
P U L L harder
I have become a puppet show
Put on stage as the
“Very bright girl who’s going places!”
Yet when someone dares to ask where
No one can respond.
Some days I remember to peak behind the curtain
To glimpse at the young woman living there
Her hair is shredded
eyes
sinking
into
sallow
cheeks
Parts of her skin flaked to the
Bone
She coughs violently
I look away, silently
Trying to forget her body is
My own.
The girl faces the crumbling notebooks
Full of half-finished stories
Rage pounds its angry fist into my thoughts
How dare she remind me of what could have been?
“Your rent is due!”
Power turns my expression cold
She is in a funny mood today
Asking if I would take this month’s rent
In stories I should have told.
My eyes have finally adjusted
To the darkness behind this curtain
Yet I leave, disgusted
Thinking about stories I could have told
The s on these broken wrists
t
r
i
n
g
s
P U L L t i g h t e r t i g h t e r t i g h t e r t i g h t e rtighter
I have no life left;
I have but this show
One day I sense c-r-a-c-k in my
mask
Oh my!
The mask has nearly fallen and the curtain almost d
r
o
p
s
My wrists no longer throb
And thus I peer behind the dreaded drapes
To ask the girl to run away together
Our masks are cracked, after all
But she shook her head-
She was too far gone
Wilting back into the darkness
She took the notebooks into her feeble hands
I return to my show
For I have nothing more
I haven’t seen her in a while…
If the curtain pulls back
Will I be greeted with anything
But her bones?