Dull My Senses

So I can slip... down into my broken world of dreams

If I were just a princess, waiting for my prince

Or a serial killer, a-hiding from my sins

Not that far gone, though, to say that anything

would be better than this.

She makes this place a madhouse

Makes me want to blot every movement out,
shut every fraction of sound...
out,
out,
out.

Dull my senses

So I can't feel

Not hurt, not pain;

Nor joy, again.

So I can't stare with reproach, haunting, in my eyes

Can't stab you with lightning stolen from the skies

So I can wrap myself away in a cocoon of doubt
In wrath, but in doubt
Of the sense in myself.

That death may cease to terrify me; death swooping down to rip the heart out of home. Death inching forward to take someone so eager to leave me.

Sense enough to wash this madness, together with the soap suds on the dishes...

Down the drainhole.


The doorbell rang.

She put down the plate, went to get the door.

It was a woman she'd never seen before.

She lifted her head with a saucy smile

It felt good to pretend, just for awhile

She didn't know the girl grappling for words, in the dining room,
just before.

Neither did she recognise the one who cheerily announced she was going to college in June,
to a complete stranger.

She was lost, for a moment. There in body but absent in spirit.

A vacant smile.

A moving shell.