I gave you words.
And you opened your mouth. So wide.
There was no end to the gulf.
The page-sprinting narrator.
Why are you holding me so tightly?
Why can’t I let go?
You make me so small.
You make me one of your demented murals. No more.
You cannot let go.
Dragging me into your make-belief world.
You hoarder of sentiments. Not yours.
You are about to explode and it has nothing to do with you.
Your lying face is so adorned, people fall in love with it.
The promises. The exaggeration. They are blind to the twitch.
Carrier of bin bags. Smotherer of the pulse.
I destroy your words in my pillow.
I holler your name over the balcony.
I exorcise the fear when I hear it.
I need to say it. Expulse it.
I am not running away.
I try to survive.
“Oh for the Touch of a Vanished Hand” by Charles Edward Perugini (1839-1918)
Croque-Melpomene 