Dead Girl Walking

I

The

pretty girls

smile and dance

on the hot asphalt.

She watches from a

distance as they giggle

and chase colourful spirits

across the playground.

They do not dance with her;

she does not belong.

She wishes she

were one of the

pretty girls.

II

He died in March.

She watches

every morning as

the horror grows:

alone in isolation,

alone in isolation,

clinging desperately

to the image of grace -

if only she were

one of the pretty girls.

III

She

crafts

the tools to

tame the beast.

No longer will she

succumb to such impulse;

no longer will she fill with shame.

In this world of the imperfect,

she will be the leader of a

rebellion of

one.

Defiance

in her eyes,

anger in her

heart, she spits out the

fattening rules and

forges her own;

she stamps out

reality and

reshapes

truth.

With ease,

with triumph,

she wields fear as a

weapon and molds it

into an impenetrable cage;

proudly ties her crumbling

body to the tracks and

abandones it to

conduct the

incoming

train.

One step more and she will be strong;

One mile more and she will belong.

IV

Shackled in her cage of

fear and compulsion,

she paces;

she counts

the seconds,

the minutes,

the days;

the Terror grows wings and spreads -

she is filled with delusion -

The world spins on; time passes -

she despises too much,

she despises too little.

In the blackness

of her brain,

the world

shrinks

to

a

singularity:

all that matters is control.

V

It is not that

she has become

the monster,

the disease,

the terror -

It is that the monster

has always spoken

in her voice.