Scorch
Face cut against the scorching wind
a red coat snug and worn
hugging the heavy flesh
housing the light burden of childhood
until one day distant but remembered,
you came to us and cracked as your voice said
she had been taken away
A.K.A. we could no longer be the children we wished to be.
Nothing more was left, the silence floating around our cerebral heads
and finally, finally back she came,
fresh and pumped full of the artificial poison that would keep her steady,
hands shaking at the steering wheel and
hosts of the woman she used to be,
shocked against the cold floor of a basement, lying. Alone.
I thought of how wrong they all were when they told me:
“She’ll hurt herself before she gets to you.”
Face cut against the scorching wind
a red coat snug and worn
hugging the heavy flesh
housing the light burden of childhood
until one day distant but remembered,
you came to us and cracked as your voice said
she had been taken away
A.K.A. we could no longer be the children we wished to be.
Nothing more was left, the silence floating around our cerebral heads
and finally, finally back she came,
fresh and pumped full of the artificial poison that would keep her steady,
hands shaking at the steering wheel and
hosts of the woman she used to be,
shocked against the cold floor of a basement, lying. Alone.
I thought of how wrong they all were when they told me:
“She’ll hurt herself before she gets to you.”
By: Sarah Niskanen