Innocence Is Only For Angels
She pulls the drawstrings tight around her neck
Letting dark long thick locks fall across her face
Like a shadow trying to conceal the very beauty that she is
Long sleeves never short,
Trousers never skirts.
Entrapped by the very garments she struggles to pull on in the morning.
The garments that suffocate her, ridding her of breath
As if to force the light out from her eyes
As if to make her body wither and whimper and wilt
Like a flower forever trapped in winter slowly dying.
She does this because they tell her to
They say it’s protection
All for affection
And of course it was never supposed to be subjection.
She knows they want to keep her sweet
Keep her so that she will always chase the butterflies
And never question how they fly
Keep her so that she believes in magic
Protect her innocence.
She is covered up as not to attract the likes of monsters
So that her walks home are never ambushed
So that on her prom night no one will see her
No one will want to steal her away to a hotel room
No one will try and take what is hers
What should always be hers.
But was never really hers.
They say she will grow up
They say that they will keep her safe
Just like they do now
Just like they do when they lock her doors and windows at night
No matter how hot and stuffy the room might make her
No matter how scared she may be of the dark they still keep on no lights
For if there was light god forbid if someone were to find her
She does not exist
For ‘safety’s’ sake she is invisible.
She will never marry
She knows this now
She must be kept to herself
So that she will never share her body with another
So that the world can never destroy her mind
Her youth
Her innocence.
This is what they said
They raised her this way
To keep her kind
To keep her pure
To keep her in the depths of youth.
They were positive and sure that she would never break
That she would always stay as they themselves shaped her to be
That she would never become.
Because what is it to become?
For progress leads to distress
And to transgress
And to minds that decay from too much stress
Nobody needs that
They. They don’t want her like that.
They could not see that she was wasting away
Dying and crying every night
And nor could she.
For she was never made known
To all that could potentially destroy her soul
She did not know of death
He was a fairytale living in a distant land
She knew not about her tears
Even though they made the rivers that she drowned in.
She did meet death eventually
They, the ones who told her how to live
Told her how to grow
They stayed by her side and told her
He- death
Was in her mind
Her beautiful innocent mind
She was going and leaving them
But they were holding her back with a rope of lies
They were adamant that she was innocent
So innocent
And that innocence could never die.
But she closed her eyes and heard the steady flat line.
Her whole entire life they had protected her from the only innocence that they knew
The innocence that lead to her death
There was the day on which she lost it
Her innocence When death claimed her for his own
For her life was innocent
And angels were never born to walk on the Earth.