I am
the porcelain doll
I had as a little girl: fair,
fragile and lifeless.

I exist
only in limbo;
between grey and black,
between fighting and releasing.

All of the mirrors
have turned into shattered frames.
Every picture
houses a strange woman
whose gaze I dare not meet.

At what point
do the haunted,
become the ghouls?        

This house
no longer feels a home,
just an orderly sanctuary
for a disorderly soul.
I am a prisoner
in a pretty palace,
in which I am self-imposed.          

Is there
a sadness so great,
it cannot be tamed?

And if
I should disintegrate
from this very spot, into ash?
I am not a phoenix I fear,
but a sparrow.

I wish that my parent’s actions,
weren’t always geared towards war.

I wish that they would’ve fought for themselves,
and not for what they could take from each other.

I wish that I could’ve been just a daughter,
and not a strategy.

I wish I could love myself,
so that I wasn’t so desperate for others to.
I wish I believed that love is something I deserve.

I wish my diagnoses motivated me to take better care of myself,
as opposed to leaving my fate up to natural selection.


I wish I wasn’t so OK with the notion of dying young.

I wish I could hold on to more than a mere temporary escape.

I wish for I do not have the will to do more than wish.
I wish because I have always been a fish out of water,
and yet somehow these days I can’t seem to stop drowning.