• Paper balloons float up into the translucent sky
    Fade into clear white
    While the sharp pitch rings in ears
    One eye, glassy, glazed
    Stares with nothingness up

    Drowning in the playground of
    Broken toys…
    Little dolls with shattered cups
    Stained dresses of old white
    That’s died away

    Cracked sugar bowls whose tops turned over
    An eye missing
    A hand crawling, creeping
    Across the undusted floor
    And strawberry lipstick smeared like…

    The night cradles
    Such obscenely
    There’s a glint of silver
    Shine, shine brightly in the sliver of dead moon
    Dull passion, dead life, dull feel
    It reflects that missing eye

    The empty socket
    Instead, two legs
    That of the wretched centipede
    Out, Inch by inch
    A sick smile twists itself

    And here it comes
    They, not it, they…
    One hand, overall, overreaching
    Controlling what both the missing eye sees

    The head’s picked off, the laugh’s just started
    So easily, it’s a doll isn’t it?
    Little butterfly, in the shape of a little plaything
    Giggling, hand offering— Here’s a pin
    “To keep your heart in”

    No shudder back to life
    No gasp of misery to bring back the memories
    Contradictions, one, and no more . . .
    Only transcends into nothing.

    Not fearing it
    But anxiety bites anyway
    Even as velvet black smothers
    What gives it, was meant to be bliss
    In its place—

    Clean, vanished.