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Cover image for post Untitled, by misty
Profile avatar image for misty
misty
220 reads

she sits cross legged on the hotel bed

in the middle of a room for two.

she hasn't smiled for months;

her friends say she has forgotten

just how to.

it's unexpected, how difficult it is

to relearn something so

instinctive.

pull your lips back,

tilt your head,

bare your teeth.

(to a cruel world,

why should she?)

from the back-blue world outside her windowsill,

from the lies that her parents told her

that

the sky will always be baby blue,

like your eyes,

from what little light remains

you can see the rusted scissors in her left hand

and the jagged lines of wet, wavy hair

that fall into the creases of her lap

and catch on the ribbed indents

of her body.

she breathes in.

the shower is still running.

on the fogged glass,

as a dying testament

to the promise she made to her therapist

about self improvement,

(fake it 'till you make it,)

reads in her shaky handwriting

'i am okay.'

it still disappears, slowly.

whatever happened to being in the centre of the universe

and stopping the moon

and the stars

when she breathed in?

whatever happened to stopping the running of the world-

the mothers crying,

the people dying,

- so somebody could come save her first?

whatever happened to the superhero stories

her parents read her?

to their arms and warm embrace?

to her friends,

a shoulder to cry on?

whatever happened

to the promises made at childhood,

that you'll never be alone

because you'll have at least the moon

following you,

right by your side,

ready to catch you if you fall?

she cries, shoulders heaving.

there are dots in her eyes

that follow her around

until she thinks that they are cracks in her world

and that, behind all this life,

there are rainbows.

an escape.

what's the harm

in a little running away?

she turns on the bedroom light

because that’s what her mother would do.

she is trying to help herself.

under a yellow electric light

spilling static into the air,

her scissors glint.

and so she falls in love

that night

with tracing thin white lines,

with ruining

and saving

herself.

#poetry #pt.1

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