Dismiss me - slave with the golden letterhead

gypsy girl, running across the street in a panic.

Frantic, and violent

with

the

slave-like

refusal -

my honesty bores you,

makes you think that I

am

not

me!

(I am aren't I?)

Twenty years to drown by

inside

the

realization

of

(that)

refusal -

and things new scare me

but I hold my head up and re-work it,

jerk it back into place, the perks of being an all too adaptable person

in the face of my backcountry.

I'm a girl with a lot of wilderness behind her

but I like how bright the big city is;

unlike the forests (of my slave days)

you can never get lost here.

And

what I say is real (what I write, to)

I'll cup my hands

over your dry lips

and let you taste

what my father does;

what men do when they think I'm not looking,

what women

talk about

when they think I'm not listening -

the way the moon always rises

disjointedly

between my two window panes

just

two

white orbs

divided -

dismissed,

yes, that is what I am.

My sighs make you cry,

to have wept

for someone else's ever glazed joy of letting it out.

The irony

of my propriety

just another stepping stone in your inventory;

catalogue me

as nothing more then a cheap delight between the verses;

curses

of then

and now - Wow, you say.

Do I thrill you?

Chill you as I spill it across the succulent letterhead

the bed is there -

and my fingers feel like lead sometimes.

Your refusal to understand

dismisses me (slave like) as just another adornment

to inspire,

but still a liar - am I?