Juliet Cook

Some people want to remove your eyes

Past lives brimming with body bags,
candied apples shoved inside to rot.

Mouth gags without permission.
This broken voice can't scream
or speak for itself.

You're backtracked to being stuck
in someone else's controlled space forever.

***

Crying every morning
as your own disabled brain keeps on
repeating the wrong soundtracks.

Carotid arteries competing
for a better husband
or another word to replace

everything you lost.
You can't speak for yourself
because your mouth is moving backwards

as competitors tell you what to do,
want you to pick their side.

***

He wants you to pick his side.
She wants you to pick her side.
You're not allowed to have your own.

You barely exist anymore,
even if you can still hear yourself
inside your own mind.

Nobody else can hear you.
They make up who you are
inside their own minds.

If it was up to them, they might cut your tongue out,
quickly replace it,
pretend you don't really exist.

***

He thinks he can make it up to you
by suddenly replacing you

with an eyeless, mouthless mannequin,
silently positioned against your closed garage door
like an unasked for reminder or a secret test.

She thinks she can make it up to you
by telling you to rip off its head
and immediately toss it in the garbage can.

As if all of this is easy
as long as you don't speak for yourself.

Flesh World

1.

You are filled with broken rocks,
sinking all the way down
into the cold water.
Snapping turtles' mouths are pistols.

2.

Temporarily replacing your face
with someone else's
ripped apart, trapped screaming
skin mask.

A journal entry with half a page torn out
and hidden.

3.

Covered up by a costume.
Filled with screams inside your head.

Your construction paper is rotting
and a man wants a woman young
enough to be his daughter.

 

Juliet Cook is brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and dark red explosions. She is drawn to poetry, abstract visual art, and other forms of expression. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.