Photo by 55Laney69

A gauze falls
between her and the world
Anchorless girl
senses unreliable
irises unseeing
Her epidermis
an armoured hedgehog
which spurns touch

The tide
takes her sanity
until she no longer
knows who she is
Everything becomes
a performance
The ticking of time
a judge’s gavel

Her make-up sits
thick upon her skin
like a shabby room
with three coats of paint
or a marionette
The tangerine lipstick
full of life, contrasts
with fish-like eyes

She walks amidst
cogs and corpses
disconnected from purpose
grasping for highs
fumbling
braces hands
against walls
and finds sand

Eventually she breaks.

Her tears evolve
into shards of glass,
chiselling into a future
free of artifice
Her spine straightens,
her lips pale and unyielding
wind twists her hair
into a crown

The last roots break
She shrieks
and takes an axe
to belonging
A girl remade