Have You Ever Lived In Third Person

March 20, 2017

Empath ...
She was born in a nest

built from shadows, secrets, and tears.

A tiny girl old as yesterday’s locked tongue

was raw wired for channeling misery

before she took her first step.

(Have you ever lived in third person?

Every bump in the night carries whispers,

every scratch a wound, every battle

a knotted stomach, every failure a fall,

every they stripping I from your tongue.)

When a bird cracks through the egg

its an ugly little thing full of what if

and dreams of far flying wings.

With walls full of echoes and faces of ghosts

she never lived fairy tales other than Grimm.

Home wasn’t warm. Home wasn’t hope.

Home was a place she wished to escape.

©Susie Clevenger 2017

Real Toads Weekend Mini Challenge ~ Home

Comments

Anonymous said…

The third-person home is a place devoid of me or you, becomes a sensory iteration of what is only absently present. An address, a heart with "walls full of echoes and faces of ghosts." Some place to get the hell out of. Great response to the challenge, Susie, if Grimm.

March 21, 2017 at 5:08 AM

Magaly Guerrero said…

This is the sort of poem that starts breaking the heart the moment one reads the title. There is such pain in living without I. And when one reads the first word, things get even worse--she doesn't only exist without a private self, but as an "empath" has to experience the pain of the world, too. No one should have to live with the entire world on her back, especially when the one in question seems to have been born out of misery and into misery. By the time I was done reading the poem, I wanted to jump into it, just so I could grab her and we could runaway together. No one should have to live in a cage.

March 21, 2017 at 4:01 PM

Anonymous said…

Yes. Well captured. You must have experienced it too.

March 21, 2017 at 4:47 PM