We could live suspicious, breathing
to bleed—but my mouth had nothing for strange quiet.

I was too much, waiting to make my good news face down

on the bed, years ago. Our futures
threw white linen aside, burned cold and bright and displaced.

I was an upcoming birthday, mascara-bound and dazed.

My anxieties knelt to lavish that witch heart in me with maple
and iron—my throat forever this box

of sour faith. I ran, turned my back on rotting thoughts, unable

to apologize. And the music saw me, nearer, dusty on the floor,
sprawled thorny in blue tulle. I had to turn,

see the tarnish, my name enough to make me the devil’s moon

soft and forbidding. Under my smile
I wished for an ocean to take the hours, hostility let out.

This is an erasure poem. Source text: Andrews, V. C. Flowers in the Attic. Pocket Books Paperback ed. New York: Pocket Books, 2014. 295-308. Print.