I knew a brave girl.
In spite of all quicknesses and vivid determination
she lived and lived inside a dirty bubble of fear.
And how she could run a long, long road
faster than a blue fox,
light leaking from her head
into shapes of dead friends.
Sadness thrust itself like Hades’ hand
up from the ground as she ran. It
made her fall
It made her twist the other way.
He said:
“I will boil your bones
I will consume the broth
You exist only as my breath.”
Her shoes, the punishing molten iron
of the wicked. She wore them by mistake.
It was difficult, impossible. She kept
going anyway.
The thing that had gone wrong rang in
her brain. An alarm clock ticking life away. She was running
in her sleep. She never slept.
Its true she was stolen.
Thin shadow crack door
reached in long shadowy arm.
Yanked through the gold bars of the crib,
they left a feral baby with a ropey grip
who screamed and screamed and would not drink her milk.
Nursed by shades with whispering voices of smoke,
the rind of a human child congeals in the half-light.
A great hunger linked her to the child in the crib.
This body never received its guest. No sovereignty.
A hand grenade inserted in her hip.