Certainly not kin
But more than kind?
Did she give it all away
And lose her mind?
Clean white Styrofoam boxes
Folded into themselves
Lining the shelves,
Neat and sterile as hospital supplies,
Lonely as a castle lookout;
Souvenirs of nights away
Forgetting father’s pressure;
Brother’s absence and hypocrisy;
Her proverbial prison of gilded walls.
Protected yet prevented
From living.
He charmed the ear, the lips,
The mind, the blushing vanity—
A promising escape
From another soul not free.
Something special with this take-home box,
Closed for once with tenderness.
A way out?
A newfound prison?
A true love?
It matters not
For now none of them care
They’re crazy, gone, or dead.
They only wanted to pull the strings,
Puppet their madness
Till it seeped down and down
And into her heart, too.
Something is rotten
The flowers will mask it
Fresh fragrance
To cover the death,
The deception,
The fact she’s been abandoned.
The water, the flowers
The rotten, the un-kind
Life and death
Cage and kisses
Lost, lost, lost
Loving men, and used by them
Left trapped and naked under suits of woe
Perpetually mourning and already dead is
Not to be—
For her, they left no question
To thine ownself be true:
Woman thy name is not frailty
It is kindness in an un-kind world.
