Affliction

 

Once more, I resuscitate myself,
disturbing the pallet of bitter taste
in rippled purples of a spectrum.

What happened to the little birds
I knew atop the windup music box
with songs I still coo the words to ?

Nothing’s as it was, it never will be
though life is never as perfect;
I’d have to regurgitate a lung.

So the precious live on in our minds,
draped in colorblind Victorian
black taffeta’s smoldering affliction.

Of promises frozen in time,
the laughter of past generations
who never looked something like us.

Of our stillborn children with sunken
eyes, holding tight their little pug
dogs for Lewis Carroll’s camera lens.