like a ball of yarn
the cat pounced on and
swatted at. Every strike of
his paw I grew small

till I was not at all. I unwind
like a spool of fishing line cast
by a silhouette drinking *****,
smoking cigarettes. He spun

a web of lies like a spider
trapping the fly. I was unstrung
like a harp. He couldn't pluck me
with his fingers. The music

died. The wooden frame
all now in splinters. A rope will fray
when cut. I hung on till my edges
grew threadbare. Now I'm dust in the air.

gold was rust the day
this turned to dust. All
the bouncing dots
flatlined. Swans in the lake

turn swine. When did
the sunflowers drop their
heads? Their bright yellow
petals shed like cat hair

on the stripe upholstered
chair. When did the cornflower
sky sigh with the wind and turn
charcoal? How did the moon

break into pieces when once
whole? The sun's rays douses
its light? What cut the string
of the high-flying kite? Why

July, did you turn frost? Blades
in the yard from standing
now moss. The diamond ring
is glass. Inside of it, many cracks.

infesting my floors
and walls. Eating through
the cherry wood till there's a
hole where my house once

stood. He's a pathogen
invading my body with his,
injecting the poison in a shot
of release like a pent up

sneeze. He's smog, polluting
the air I breathe, blocking
my lungs till I wheeze. He's
a bacterial infection spreading

into my tissue. Knocking down
cells, making my brain swell. He's a
malignant tumor growing every day,
till I putrefy in a pool of his lies.

a little black dot that marks
the end. That's my lot. A speck
no bigger than the head of
a pin. There is no way for me

to win. I build a nest on strings
of words that stood before. My life  
is nothing but a bore. I am not
read. And I sit low. People pass

me as they go. And if there's
a question do I get hooked?
Like a wire hanger in a closet
full of clothes or the curl of

a cat's tail above my nose. And if
they make a point they throw me
a line in the shape of a joint! Some
men throw another dot above

my rounded head: So, there’s two
of us, not one instead. My twin is not
fine company. She's just a copy of me. Men
pause; I jump on top bearing my claws.

like a dream,
but chases me around
like a speeding car down
the boulevard.  It dropped

like a burnt souffle'. But
I wake to it every day, smoky
and grey. It's finished like
a line somebody crossed. I was

tossed in the air like
a coin. Landed on heads.  Cut like
threads after stitching. It was
bewitching! It stopped

like a broken clock. Only kept
time twice a day. But in the rhyme,
it sliced my lines.  Expired
like curdled milk from sitting

too long on the shelf. It closed like
a slamming door in my face. I banged
on the wood till my knuckles turned
red. But I haven't in years put it to bed.

like a piece of old silk cloth
bought at the fabric store. And
stitched me into a pair of pants
a moth ate holes in and

danced. Sliced me like a loaf
of bread. Throwing away
the crust and ends. Sandwiching
me with a ****** between a rock

and a hard place with boyish
lust. He shaved me. And I grew
back as new stubble, short and
hard, till I scratch everything

that touches my skin. He axed
me like a maple tree. And I
fell hard, covering his whole
front yard. Then he took my limbs

and shredded them into his
woodchipper. I was broken into
a thousand pieces. My release is
spreading them as mulch in my garden.

like the seasons
from the full bloom of lilac spring
till his room was billowy grey clouds
snowing in shrouds. He was

a ripe banana left in the noonday
sun, turning from bright yellow
to pitch tar, my Freud smoking
cigar. A caterpillar

morphs into a butterfly. But I
died in his cocoon in late
June. Like a blood orange sunset
at night, down went my light. I was

a silhouette hung on his wall. He
dressed from green to red like colors
in the fall. And then stood bare like
the trees. Empty branches

scratching the windowpane
through the howls. The lakes are
sheets of ice that I don't walk
on. The moon will change by dawn.