leave the womb broken
burbling dreams like fault lines in your bones,
a maze of missteps and misdirection
mapped across the ice on your sclera.
scarred and crooked, your skin–
a patchwork of harsh words
and harder silences–
seeks winter to fit in,
snow streaking lips blue
the only gentle you’ve ever known.
coherency goes out the window
when you can’t make your body listen,
when the floor becomes concrete
and casts become prisons;
more like plaster molds and steel corsets,
you’ve been trussed up and mistrusted
since hour one.
you breathe staccato, breaking angular:
a dry rot lullaby leading to a hand-dug grave
you’re not allowed to chisel on your own.
naive dedications
make way for shoestring hopes
and porcelain dolls are made
for things less likely to fray.
betwixt-the-pages 