its strange those moments

when I take a break

where homework creeps

and time goes out of window

I sit here stolid, so sad and frail

Reality is far darker than I once imagined.

When you are a child, you believe you can have the world

that you can have anything

Can do anything

Be anyone and perhaps too, run the world

I am chained to life

Tethered by the weight of family

Tied down by expectations that never end

As a master of art,

You do not belong to yourself.

it is boredom that plagues me

and haunts me

and follows

in day to night

It approaches again

the seed of doubt

the rain on my parade

the insinuation that I am not right

that I cannot write

and tumble as I please.

And I am battered and criticized

My limbs ripped apart —

Torn flesh bleeding from my corpse

bones shattered, splintered,

dripping with blood

He wishes for self-sabotage

A do-over, a new beginning before

the sudden end.

I am Icarus in silence

it is my skin that is burning

as I stand in the light

climbed too high

And therefore I must walk back to the beginning

Back to my beginning

And retrace my steps like a dancer

Reintroduced to walking

Poor child in the castle

Poor child flying high

she is cloistered and sheltered

and hidden in walls

I wonder, ponder, think back

at the girl I was; so frail

and fragile -

Who are we in this world

Where are we going

And what lives do we live

And I can feel it,

The sudden mandate approaching

the routing aisle

The roadblock in the way

Women drift like flower petals

Twirling and spinning onto the next

The next lover

The next trick

The next outfit

i am attuned in my heart

with the word and words

Leaves fall and twirl

spinning like life fallen,

into death.

I didn’t ask to be born into this world

I was forced into it

Like a seed planted

Watered and blessed with sunlight to sprout