Wrinkled Paper

by Adrienne Monestere

Wrinkled paper in the schoolyard

She was carved
from wooden shafts
of blackwood and pink ivory,
mulched and pulped
in collated swank.
From bolted margins
                                       she’s parted from her shield
rebelling against the jotter,
                                       torn to an asphalt schoolyard,
mutilated to a ball,
                                       beaten and launched
with their wooden bats,
                                       smashed in a recess game.
Humiliated,                                       
                                       frightened, rising
through ridicule,
                                       she lies wrinkled,
rumpled
                                       and tramped.

She limps towards the breach
to a bridge of branches,
fading slowly back into margins,
ironed with sharp splinters.
Never the same
                                       Never the same.

Category: Featured, Poetry, SNHU Student