The Lost Women I have known
an endless string of paper cutouts
fluttering in the breeze
Touch them and they bruise in colors
that lay in wait all along
underneath the smooth white surface;
touch them and they draw blood
with perfect precision,
though it stains them also.
The Lost Women I have known
Such pleasing displays when viewed head-on;
such a razor-thin sharpness when you slide
around to a vulnerable side.
From that angle they are all the same,
cut from a pattern written to wound.
It paralyzes me now, this feeling
That now I know to sidestep the crackle,
the sweet dry rustle of papery laughs;
that now I must always hunt for the trail
of two-dimensional betrayal.
It paralyzes me to know I must circle
like a wary predator, because otherwise
I am prey.
It paralyzes me because knowledge
is worse than ignorance;
because knowledge means I -must- touch,
disturb the placid surface with purple ripples.
Knowledge makes you my enemy,
means that things sever, and fall apart;
Knowledge makes you Lost.
