Limerick

I am poison. Hear me roar
with a shoe in my mouth, the laces hanging out,
the crown on my head turns out to rusty.
The yearbook photo will be memorable
though no pages will be there to doodle.


She’s put in her place by the 'but I am going now,'
and drawn out of the cave by the fool.
Fingernail paint chips a day and half late.
Whats the use of being a girl
The ribcage is the chamber pot.

You can return home, even when some else lives there. It will be awkward, having dinner with a family that’s not yours. You may find out your home is not home any more and you homesick for a life you never lived (thought borrowed from Garden State). But one place you can’t return to is the place where the dandelions were not hunted down by herbicidal gardeners getting paid less than minimum wage in the wee dawn hours. Where the sun rose not on school or doom, but adventure. That is innocence and while I long for it. But I can not return.

I’ve become tree bark. My inside still sap. Carrying buckets of maple sugar.