Lonely Little Alice

Hot little fingers

Slip down into groping lips

Until lips go numb,

Until rigid teeth are aching

And bleeding head is pounding

And spine is arched in feline seizure;

Fingers with nails painted red

And smoothed with files,

And trimmed with metal shears,

These fingers dip deeper into the longing tunnels

And bring up the choking oppression of beauty;

Hot little fingers

Poke upon the table,

Twitch at the edges of iron wills,

And refuse.

The roar from below,

The roar that frightens, that echoes

In the rejecting walls,

And that envelopes what she sends down to it,

And turns it into dense inches

Inches and inches

And inches.

Eyes meet themselves,

Projected in the glass that distorts,

And makes them see what isn’t there.

Just one more day, just one more inch,

Another,

And another,

Until there are no more inches, and she is gone.

In the red darkness, bodies move,

Bodies writhe, jabbing bodies

Sweating, moving, twisting

Dancing

And in her mind she stands and watches

Because she has nothing else to do.

Cold and burning, she lies

Curled on the floor, with her hot little fingers

Fisted against her chest,

Wanting to smash the glass and rip herself apart,

And take herself away;

While at last, lonely little Alice

Loses control of her numb lips, her hot fingers

And wastes away

Into dusty bones and dusty eyes;

Bleeds herself into the ground

Until nothing remains

Of lonely little Alice

But the pointed bones,

And the stretching skin

And the icy wind.

And until nothing remembers

lonely little Alice

But the shivering, trembling mirror

That, inch by inch,

Moment by moment,

Whisper by whisper,

Stole away my life

From me.