Matryoshka Marionette

There were concentric rooms, 

Caving in on themselves in fetal positions. 

Matryoshka rooms with no windows,

But we had our imaginations, 

Construed by mist meandering in misdemeanored sheep's skin, 

We couldn't wait for it to settle. 

The night would call and say

WAIT FOR IT

WAIT FOR IT!--

Ringing ears became shaking knees, 

Lowering us closer to where we belong-- 

In the belly of the magma-crusted beast 

We called "home," 

He did headstands for days on end,

Just to make us weaker,

Begging him to unclench his mossy jaw and 

SWALLOW US WHOLE, 

EAT US! 

EAT US, 

BEFORE WE EAT OURSELVES!

The sun would vanish in silk scarves of fuchsia and tangerine, 

And we'd cry out into skies that had been printed and reprinted with characters we'd never before seen, 

Characters that challenged our own.

We felt ourselves growing smaller,

crying out

We can be better, 

I WILL BE BETTER

into Venn diagrams intersecting at black holes.

Looking out beyond the cracking sheetrock, 

We'd take off our floral-printed Nazi lampshades,

Believing again in so much more

than just the blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauties 

we wished our lives to be,

WE CAN BE BETTER! 

Late-night harbored soul searches across danger-ridden highways,

It was a one-way track on translucent strings 

to continuously be swallowed 

By smaller and smaller fish,

Until you were so far down on the food chain, 

That you were 

hardly even a 

scratch 

on the rouged knees of our collective conscious. 

Matryoshka marionette, 

Why have your bones gone soft?

Why have you,

grown so small?

These windowless walls folding themselves into origami cranes,

are all we have,

so let your shoulder-blades

pierce through your ricepaper skin,

and attempt to

dance freely

again.

Author's Note

Unfinished, rant