She goes through life

Quiet and submissive

Dismissive

Always permissive of what other people want

 

Always saying "sure"

Instead of "yes"

Never committing to an answer

A dancer from one opinion to the next

 

Never offering a suggestion

Out of the question

A protection for the voice she feels like doesn't belong

She never knew she was wrong

 

She thinks her face

Is no more than a place mat

That feet trample on

Ample only as wallpaper

A wallflower that never blooms

Any role she assumes

Until she runs out of costumes

 

Boom!

She inhaled the fumes

She inhaled everything bad and nothing good

Left never feeling like she could

Speak up

 

Peek up through the tunnel

Funneling silent shame

Just a distressed dame

Too close to the flame

 

She never became who she was supposed to be

Too naive to see

How easy it was to be free

 

No one held her down but herself

Drowned by the very air she breathed

No one else perceived her suffocating

Suffering

 

Smothering the person who she thought she hated

So frustrated

That no one else could take her place

Take her body

Take the stranger in the mirror

 

Clearer the solution became each day

There was no other way to exchange her being

Rearrange her feelings

Estranged she felt from the rest of the world

 

Her chest hollowed

Her head followed

As she swallowed

And took her last breath.