“Oh, would you look at that! Isn’t that the girl

who would crack under the pressure of her own resolve,

forgot how to use her mouth, hands, and the like,

who had not a shred of kindness to her,

only niceness, or– go figure, how

to write happy stories, who

desperately soaked up all words of affirmation

meant for her, and who one day

reached out her hands only to feel

etchings of neuralgic blessings so that her bones

started to stiffen, who no doubt had

a propensity towards her own ruination

‘till she became a dried plum

in her ripe adolescence?”

“Oh! Look at her now!

Grief and hopelessness, grief and hopelessness,

dozens– no, hundreds of her reflections revealed as swirls on paper

under the honest moonlight that led that child to circle back to a home

that welcomes children too afraid to step into the world,

visualising God, and love, and justice, the sort of things that led them to

swallow their fears and absolve

themselves of the guilt of those deadweights, only to

throw it all back up.”

throw it all back up.”