Her face displayed a smile,
Her skin made out of false matters,
She painted herself in gold.
How beautiful where her skin,
Her skin striking in the sun,
The paint shone bright,
And inchmeal, she melts.
How could you paint
Plastic out of gold?
Have you dreamt of a world
Filled with her infamous thoughts?
Have you lived in a world
Where her existence
Is just a living nightmare?
Beings? Night terrors?
All because of a
toxic Barbie doll.

You sit by my wooden dresser
There in the corner of my bedroom.
Sweeter you look in front of me,
Than the way you chatter behind me.
Every piece I hold onto,
Thee steal and smirk...
Doing it as if I have not yet caught.
You loved taking my heart into your palm.
Breaking them into pieces
And would make ******* out of them.
What a waste for me to let you
Break it for me.

Call me bossy,
Maybe I’m just clever.
You could be so jealous
I guess I’m just smart.
Do you have those brains, too?
I’ve heard you had none.
You’re pulling me down,
While you had nothing to brag about.
The best of me,
Oh that crap of yours,
I give it my all,
While you had none.
Responsibility, what a word.
Recalling the first times,
You seemed to look innocent.
It was memorable
for you never liked me,
Neither did I.
“Best friend”?
It is such a believable name,
Isn’t it? But, I don’t remember it.
“Stop being my friend”
******, then leave me behind.
I would not be the one doing it for you.
Opening your diary,
While you never read mine.
You ask how I was,
I answered, “I’m fine.”
Your concern? Angelic yet fake.
Look now who’s a Barbie in her smile.
I  am not playing puppets,
I just knew what to do.
I just had a lot of things in mind,
Wishing you told me yours.
I saw those words you held against me,
“She’s this girl and she’s that.”
You little ******, don’t be such a brat.
My mother taught me gossiping is bad,
Why do you do it to me?
I looked like a villain
but I was just a victim.
Oh, I learned in my life...
How I could say “no”,
It is brave, little one.
And to learn is to never trust
And to never talk to a Barbie doll.

I drew stick figures
things were simple

in a pencil world
mistakes were erased
you could start over

but an inchmeal awareness nagged
- the sky isn’t gray, it’s a liquid blue

but crayons were complicated
you couldn’t erase things
mistakes were irrevocable.

and there were 148 colors in the big box
keeping them in rainbow order was work.

growing up is hard

Still,
There is so little reason
Left for me to love.
Time has passed
As a roaring torrent,
Washing it all away —
The importance.
The burning passions.
Yet
I lie awake
Staring into unforgiving
darkness.
Wishing to be heartless,
Dying to be nothing
Once more,
Rather than know
another day without you.
After all this time,
No escape.
No escape.

She born as a sad news, starts burgeoning
as she grows, her miseries following
flows with the rhythm, held in curtailment
reach to the juncture of a new lament
Wedlock with duty, chore and torturing
tis’ chapter of her life yet keeps going.
Getting older and older by inchmeal
bids adieu to her beauty with genteel
and bidding farewell to her weary soul
In grave unrequited, another book closed.

I. The Boy With The Cuckoo Clock Heart

Born with a frozen heart,
abandoned in
Edinburgh.

One kind physician
laid her hands upon him,
in a bit of medicinal salvation,
by placing a cuckoo clock
inside his chest.

Now an orphan,
among peculiar friends:
tear-filled flasks,
eggs containing memories,
and a man with a musical spine.

There's but one catch
for this boy:
his heart is fragile,
he must never, ever
fall in love.

Existence is undoubted.
But without this one emotion,
can he really live?

Love is a bitter token.


II. The Girl With Glass Feet

"It was a humid night,
later to become a hated night."

Upon an island sound,
feet first, she is slowing turning
into glass.

By sheer happenstance,
she meets a shy boy
who lives there
with an extreme fear
of being touched.

As she slowly disappears,
she untethers herself
from self-pity,
by teaching the boy the value
of interaction.

Inchmeal, he begins to reach out
and feels everything
she has lost to the night.

Love is a bitter token.


III. The Snow Child

"November was here."

A married couple,
in Alaskan remote,
suffering from one great sadness:
no child of their own
and unable to talk of it.

He's buried by
the weight of the outer ice,
she's crumbling
from inner despair.

And so on a rare
friendly day trek,
they built a child out of snow,
outfitted with mittens and scarf.

A day later it is gone,
remembered only in absentia,
yet there appears
a beautifully arrayed
creature of winter,
a little, lissome girl in the woods,
hunting with the red fox.

In wishing to understand
these encounters,
the couple come to love the child
as their very own daughter.

Yet will she ever accept them
as they do her?

Or see them
merely as snowdrops?

Figurines frosted over by
the harsh landscape
they each wander?

Love is a bitter token.