Being Taken

Poetry

You are quite mistaken if you think it is my quiet time right now.

Even if it seems that

The walls are safe around me

And all I do is sleep…

In here, my headphones are blasting. Crashing me on

To run and get away and burst out

To live a thing that’s not been lived by others

A big adventure mapping out in dreams…

I just don’t quite know the way I’ll go yet

Or where I would fit.

Remember, I don’t have money.

No, I don’t want a job.

If only you could see inside my head

You’d understand the wrenching nightmare.

Where girl and woman are one and the same

But one is extricating herself from the other

Myself from myself

Or maybe, I should say, in a metamorphosis of common sorts

One is creating the other

Myself from myself

In my own image – flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones –

Either way

One of us is being taken

Through the channels, flickering.

Though there seems to be no one else around

Someone watching has seen this sort of thing happen before.

And every hidden body is peering from their black soul windows

As myself and myself are transiting furtively

Past the bystanders,

Sidling against their walls

As if we’re actors in their favourite show, the episode

Of the kidnap –

Stop.

Arrest that woman…

No one comes to help.

Surely surely surely surely something must happen next.

Because this is getting so long.

We must be going somewhere along the wall.

Or the wall must lead somewhere at least or

Do I have to make a doorway that fits?

That’s me. That shape. And here we are.

And where do we go to from here?

And so, that is what I have to say about this event:

Yes, there is a child being taken.

She is me.

Jane