Gepetto pulls the puppet strings.
Arms akimbo,
Knees jerking upward,
The puppets dance in fractured motion.
They love the dance,
And maybe they love Gepetto,
But they tire of the strings. And of being
Pulled
This way and that.
One by one
They release
the strings.
They dance.
What is it with you?
What is the block,
the wall,
the huge gray hunk of cement
that keeps you bottled up?
When did you learn it is dangerous to talk?
When did you learn you retain more power when you refuse to talk?
Jabs, attacks, cuts to your softest parts,
to your heart,
to your soul.
How you must have bent and warped and rerouted your heart after each one.
When did you start to believe that controlling all the things outside of yourself
keeps your world in control?
It doesn’t, you know.
And maybe none of that is true.
Maybe all that is true is that you
Talk when you want
Stay stony silent when you want
Judge when you want
Accuse when you want
Push away
And refuse to explain or discuss because that would mean a diminution of your power.
At most, you leave a sparse trail - breadcrumbs of communication
few
and
far
between
So that no one can figure out what is going on
Although you impatiently expect us to
When you want us to.
How is all of this so difficult?
How has this become so sad?
Something that should excite us, a treasure chest of gold pieces
we both love:
history, maps, photographs, letters, writing.
How has that devolved into a mire of
Avoidance
Arguments
Personal attacks?
Like we speak different languages
now.
I don’t understand the words coming out of your mouth
And you tell me not to say any.
How do we recover?
How do I save myself from what I don’t want to see in you,
from the nausea and fear and anger
that open like an enormous, endless, black, molten pit in me
spewing out red hot echoes that burn far too close
to the ashes of my upbringing
and my first husband
before I knew boundaries even existed
in normal people
and leave me staring,
wide-eyed and blank,
frozen in disbelief,
not knowing what to do
shaking, in that moment.
- k.s. January 2, 2022
