by Khristy L. Knudtson
Willfully strong-willed, your hair is a field;
stalks of tangled straw you force from your head
freeing the strands from your fingers
over and over and over.
They eclipse the tile floor of the juvie center
you’ve lost it,
your center.
You are a lit match—tossed.
An apocalyptic comet of self-destruction.
A cyclic revolution taunting,
chaos knows
chaos knows
chaos.
You are asphyxiated with a flat-affected apathy.
An absentee teen who
knows chaos
knows chaos
knows.
You are the proprietor of feelings pills can’t fix.
You have been sliced from stem to stern;
a ribcage shattered, exploding into figments of the person—
the wishing stars—of a five-year-old who still believed.
Willfully strong-willed, smoldering into ashes
the smell of burning hair whispering
chaos knows
chaos knows
chaos.
Category: Poetry, SNHU Creative Writing, SNHU Student