Girl Before a Mirror. Pablo Picasso. Oil on canvas.1932.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

THEY FOUND MY VOICE

They found my voice in faded ink
on scraps of paper floating from
the fallen sky. And they said
to themselves: This is how she feels.
So they rushed to my side.

I will never forgive them.
Those words were torn up
in another lifetime; thrown.
And now they are stuffed back
into my shocked mouth so that
when I spit them out it feels as if
I am saying them still.

What does it matter why? That
tears once smudged my eyes
is all that strikes them. That
I was struck too, and flattened
by the blow until I turned over
in the breeze, they do not care.

But I did and they are guilty
with excitement to see the older,
other side to me that is me no longer.
They do not care that those words
unearthed a face that was dead
and was buried. A face that I killed.
So they rushed to my side.

And with them they brought
a cadaver that rose to greet me,
a carcass that said: See, I am not dead.

I wonder how I will sleep tonight,
with two faces on my pillow
and one voice between them
as they throw more words
into the black winds of the night.

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