To reach an end with you took so long.
Your dreadful edges and hidden corners.
The incompatibilities behind your smile and mine.
He told her: “You’re sick”.
She inhaled every single word he said.
Her body listened to others. Never to herself.
She said it to her too. “You’re sick”.
They all dance their negligent dance around her.
Her skin a pale haze, healthy, she tries to disappear.
She is a believer, holding on to words, theirs.
And then the voice appears, her own, from the bottom of her brain,
Hammering against the blood she contains, constructed by outside matter.
She gazed at her mirror image and tasted her tears.
“I’m sick”. Maybe they’d love me more. Maybe I’d suddenly exist.
Her body had always been the most avid listener and absorber.
“Woman with Red Hair” by Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920)
Croque-Melpomene 