The Girl At the End of the Rope

The girl at the end of the rope
dangled like a broken piñata
Her father found her first
Tried to breathe her life back
It was rejected
like an incompatible organ

Her mother screamed
A scream full of terror and grief
It echoed
in the house
in dreams

The girl's father had twice failed
Could not protect
his daughter or
his wife
like a man should
He became a cicada shell
an empty husk of what had been
defined now by its absence

The mean girls at school
rolled their mascaraed eyes
Said it was just a joke
Only a loser
would take their taunts and threats seriously
She did

Instead of returning from spring break
with a knot in her stomach
She fastened a knot around her neck
The girl at the end of the rope.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Mini-Challenge, In Other Words

Lessons on Lying

I was never really his friend
I hated his orangy hair and luminous pale face
his omnipresent cardigan,
the color of burnt cinnamon
But he came from a good family
I mean, from money
and I was not at all rich or romantic or polished
so I pretended to love him
The sex and all?
How I hated that stuff!
Kissing his spongy lips
was like diving face first into a container of raspberry Jello
But my philosophy was
to do whatever it took to escape
Little did I know
that he was waiting to escape too
and he did-
from his family
and from the dark alley of my dissemblance
When you least expect it,
someone grows up
and gets it right
I doubt if I ever will.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Next Stop Wonderland, in which we are asked to randomly open 3 books 3 times each, pick words that catch our attention, and use them in a poem. My 3 books were The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Catcher In the Rye, and the Orchid Thief.