Raw

Based on a true story.

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I’ve been a puppet for a while now.

And I have questions.  How does one forget

to breathe?  How does one see the marionette

strings tugging them around in circles and

not scream?  I’m scared.  The Masks ask me if I am,

and yet I listen to the eerie whispers of my

puppeteer, forcing a smile and a simple negative.

When you’re sick, the body, weighed by the anvil,

goes down with its partner: the mind.  My mind has

been a snail for the past eight months, slowly chugging along.  

But it finally began to sputter and spit and I’ve lost

too many parts and pieces to go on.

I think that is how the puppet master picked me up:

I was weak and broken.  The farce that is the involuntary

movement of lungs expanding and compressing eluded me.

It left me winded.

Yet I questioned the holder of the strings:

why was I the one who became suffocated by this

whirlwind of doctor’s appointments and

internal weakness?  It shouldn’t have--couldn’t have

happened to me.  I’m invincible.

He only sneered.

Fore here I am being wheeled away on a hospital

bed in an open-backed shift.  Here I am with the needle

in my arm, and the drug seeping through me

as the world turns

dark.

They are starting now.

I am far away in this slumber of the mind.  

I am helpless: a body spread on a table ready to be opened.  

Serpentine tubes way down my hands and brain,

strangled, tangled--a web around me.

My cage.  

A h-e-a-r-t--b-e-a-t on the monitor and the rise

and fall of my chest are the only signs that

a person lies within the limp figure on the silver

platform.  But now I

am a skeleton of a person, a

slab of dried-out meat hanging on a

string.

i am the child on the swing

ropes creaking, red and sore inside,

staring blankly ahead  

nobody’s home

until the wind picks up

I am starting to think that this monstrosity of

a creature, holding my crippled life in his hands

has started to win.  He has gotten me to this table

with Masks around me, gloved hands and scalpels

glimmering in the fluorescent lights.

He has won.  I will not get up.  

There is still darkness.  Ever darkness.

An IV and the drip,

                           drip,

                                    drip

They are finishing now.

Back on the cot I am a cat by the fire, soaking

up every buttery pat of warmth it will offer me.  

There are blankets, covering the star-broidered

gown and my own mask of cold--pulsing, forcing

air up my nose and through my mouth.  

Inside I am raw,

though I don’t know it yet.  But how sweet

is this feeling compared to the last?

And thank goodness for smiling faces when

eyelashes flutter as wings, lifting off to a new leaf,

stem or petal, revealing irises and sleepy morning glories.  

Then they can take away the plastic oxygen and the

electric stickers that make me feel like a wide-eyed

guinea pig in the lab.   

 My strings have been cut, and with it, my spirit is freed again.

Goodbye, master puppeteer.

You won’t be missed.

Despite every attempt to slight my chances, I have

conquered the climb that is the pain in my

chest every time I take a breath.  The bag over

my head has been removed.

It’s time for the best of all:

the hospital cherry Jell-O that says

it’s time to go

home.

And it is over now.

I can go.

--- 

 I've spent a lot of time doing this poem over and over again; I'd really love feedback!  Thank you guys so much! :)

~Suzanne