I’m still broken in there.

Don’t let them find out – will you?

‘Cause who knows how many electrodes they’d need for me now. How many?

Wired into my skull, zigzags like entrails

Of all the failed, screwed in past the hidden blonde of my roots.

Who would hold me down?

Cause I’d need to be held

down, star-scorched and ever-squirming,

I’d dive inwards, outwards. They’d drop me into the blood-splashed swamps, my screams making lightbulbs cry halogen.

Tell them –

There’s no use looking at Mummy and Daddy ‘cause Mummy and Daddy don’t realise what they’ve done.

What they’ve made.

Don’t let them touch me

where it’s tender – on the bone

bleached bed, the beaming faces, blanched

teeth bared. Give them my limbs, legs,

let them take the nerves that make surgical still repel, make them retreat from the inside of my head.

Keep my tender place breakable.

Just not for them.

To break.

© 2019, G.M Stone. All Rights Reserved.