I think most people are monsters, but she was a menace-
to the existence of skin-deep psyches.
The kind that walked with her head down low,
the kind I’d write about a million times but still want more.
Kohl-lined eyes drifting across the pages of Mansfield park,
stifling the echoes of Esther’s voices into the bell jar of her heart’s backyard.
Said she’d died a thousand times so the void doesn’t feel heavy anymore
rose up from the ashes, to only go back to feeling sore
her hesitant, whimsical laughs
tainted with sunlight caught on the edges of her fingers
as they rose to hide her face, braids that subtly forced you to speak with grace
about how people are not monsters but a reflection of their hazy thoughts-
like petals of a dried flower, stuck to the wall, amorphously fragile knots most get wrong.