I gave up that one inch.
I didn't mean to
I never noticed it leaving
til it walked out the door.
Isabella, you sit there and you grow those white roses at the bottom of your garden
you collect shiny objects
and can you tell me
you never wanted
to close your hand and turn the butterflies
(the tall ones you planted your garden for)
into so much soft dust
to adorn yourself with
to get nets to keep them from flying away?
For a time
I did not want to be a doll
and you convinced me
flesh could do more than betray.
and i can't love ice the way I used to.
And I walk in the snow
and try to sing
and my voice,
for the first time, will not cut through tears
thick with snot.
The fleshy tubes in my nose
they don't have enough room.
I don't have enough:
No time to waste in dreaming
No words to say to those who will leave
No skills more marketable
than those of someone else's mother.
And you want
the things I taught you to want,
the things you wanted from me.
Everything new, teflon-coated
shinier
more vulnerable.
I have never understood why a girl who cannot look after herself is more desirable.
Why people want to take on that burden.
But you will find
something that never dreamed of wings
at the bottom of some garden
buried in foreign soil
and the new discovery
is worth more.
We must sell off the old, flawed fossils for the new.
and I wish....
I wish so fucking hard i could hate you
instead.