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Matchbox
It’s quite easy to confuse a crayon box with a matchbox
Then swipe over and over
Til a spark ignites and the page
The scene before you resembles a mess
That only you can uncage
Only you can see the image that’s been haunting your head
Expressed by an act that could have left you dead
None the wiser you show
Your fake friends with button noses and plastered on cheeks
What your life has come to in all its mystique
They smile on unchanged
Repeating the same phrases they have muttered all week
When squished in the belly or poked at the feet
You look around the remains of a room trying to remember when
Candlesticks became pixie sticks
And lighter were worshiped for their flame
But all that comes to mind is the time you got hurt
Making smoke rings out on the porch
Falling and flailing to the ground sparked by a torch
Where you stayed till the sky got grey
And it began to rain
It was that day you swore to never get burnt by it again
So you stuck to hop-scotch with pop rocks
And threw water balloons charged by an electric current
And maybe it’s here that someone should have asked if you should really be doing all that
If there would be a lasting effect of driving cars to fast
And wearing flint beads around your neck
But how would they have even spoke
The exhaust had already got their throats
So they look on
Gaze chilled and warn
Frozen solid through the bone
Hearts chilled over long ago
So you made it your goal to never let yourself cool
Find something boiling and sharp
To get you through
As your tongue began to glow electric blue
And maybe it’s true
You stopped by the furnace
That you knew
That you had left the crayons by the door
And that’s why you wanted to color some more
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A poem I wrote in January.