Elly Veritas- Gifted Child
They told me to DANCE and so
I did. Pointed toes and all. Under
the lamp of the moon I thrust my shoulders
back and spine went military and they
told me to FLY so I did that too. My arms asunder;
I forced wings to erupt where there’d been shadows of dreams only cracked minds could conceive and believe. Yet still emerged clipped.
But then they told me to WRITE and I
could not. When I pressed pen to paper and
entered academia, the child I had been clawed its way from the abyss and
penned a love letter to Death,
spurned and spat my ode to the lively and the lifeless, the helpless and–
The spark of nib against wood turned to fire and so they snatched until they tore the page;
tided the inkwell over to seep into grout,
scrubbed my hands and thus told me to SMILE
but it was too late. I floated in a universe that wasn’t theirs
and I could only pour out bitter blood from the heart
that beats inside its cage.
ManicWorld Magazine 