Poetry | Journal

A forlorn tang of wonder lingers on the tongue of response,
how many stories has she been diminished
from title to subtext
just the scrap of a final word
pearched at the end of their testiment,
a stain on a duvet
folded over and laundered down to the last thread
so minimized that a closer look could cause offense,
how many snapshots or pages of her life
have been over exposed, written over, dragged to the bone by rubber
until the echo of her essence is no more
than eraser shavings, clinging to the spine
and how many times has the aspiring author retold
this curtailment of her existence as scriptue, with such a bitter why,
devoid of context, provocations stricken,
is there a world in which she is
with any reason, humanly flawed, trying,
or will she always be their fallback villain
because she’s
Crazy