I remember how the shackles fit

since I was three years old 

and noticed that my brother had cars

and I had an apron lined with 

silver bars, they trapped my dreams

they hid my screams under a noxious smell

of burning bridges that led to nowhere 

in the first place. " You're a girl, where

could you be going?"  Could I be leaving

now? 

 

I hid behind my mother like a candle's waning shadow

The smaller she became, the less there was of me

my father was the dying flame that  did her in

fossilized in her waxy remains, he drenched the house in her smell

when he left, she left too- her mind a melting factory

I hid behind the machinery that never worked

the brain- her heart only pumped to keep her name. 

 

 

I prepare for my funeral every day.

surely I'll die before the letter arrives that

claims We were always better than them. 

I'd break a thousand dishes and still 

the fragments would not bury the roles. 

I fear for the day a man delivers something to my home

peeking through the fish-eyed hole in my door

trying to see a way in to me

and I will stare back harder

until he sees I need nothing from him.