prison | A Hundred Falling Veils

Posts Tagged ‘prison’

for years
thinking you were my jailer
these unyielding bars
today finding the key
in my own pocket

For an hour today, she practices escaping
from the stairs. There is no jail here,

only our pretense of bars. She,
the bank robber. I the police.

I lock her up again with my invisible
jail cell key. Then I swallow the key,

I throw it away, but she always produces another,
an invisible skeleton key she’s been hiding

somewhere around her and she lets
herself out again, then hovers nearby

to be caught. I feign dismay. She’s
escaped, again! And search for her,

looking right through her. Until,
aha! I say, and grab her. She never

struggles much, almost hurls her body
at me to be caught. So similar to

how I want to be held, forever,
I say, and then the next moment

I long for escape. Oh sweet
imagination, how real it all can seem,

like this girl slipping away from the stairs,
saying for the fourteenth time, catch me again.