Puppetier (this was writen for a slam I never got to do)

Slice my veins and fill them with your puppet strings.
Tug, Pull, lurch, and break my limbs from their sockets because I,
am yours.

Change my shapes design to your heart’s content
Give me the torso of your ballerina
The head of your most perfect porcelain doll
Arms fine as silk thread
The legs of a Crain, and the leaps of a gazelle to move me across your stage.
Showing off to everyone how ‘perfect’ I was.

The curtains finally drop and you snatch me away.
Replacing my beauty with cracked wood and rust.
Wrapping a ball and chain around my lungs to hold my breath…

…Not that I ever had one….

On that stage,
you spun my emotions like a weather vane Clutched my heart until its colored drained
to the floor.

You printed my skies gray because color was never a choice to you.
My world turned bleak the day you took advantage of my love.
You took my ‘yes’s and sewed them into the strings you hang me by.
Only taking me down to be your body servant,
Guarding you from harm as you fill me with your improbable lies.

I become concealed within your spider web, and tossed away as a dead fly.
Falling onto the cracked pavement and ice
of your heart.
Your gold eyes watch from the sky,
as I do nothing but wail like the wounded animal I am.
Smoke swirls to smirk with your lips,
Endless hatred for me courses through you because I was not what you wanted.
Even with all you’ve changed, you want more perfection for your poisoned doll.

I’m left blind and tangled on your work table as you draw out new plans for me.
You held the knife over me,
knowing full well this would be the final and ending blow if it went wrong.

I didn’t want that option.
I dragged myself away from you. Crossing the Contraband,
finally realizing my skies didn’t have to be gray.
I never said no to you, and I’m sorry for being me.
But me is who I want to be