Unseen by a careless eye,
The tiny holes
That pierce right through the paper’s skin
Cannot be played with.

These rough and edgy slits
That bind the page
With shiny, silver, spiral shackles
Refuse to give up their grasp.

These tiny holes that dot the page
Are never healed and never felt,
But they remind the paper that
The notebook has a grip on it.

But when the time has come, a child
Slowly rips apart the page:
The perforation pops in pain
And grabs a hold of what it can.
The paper, screaming in agony,
Frees itself at last—
It wanders off to be crumpled,
And hurt, and torn, and trashed,
Only at long last to find
That part of it was left behind.

My skin must be made of crystal glass
For you to stare through me so violently
I shake and shatter into a million pieces,
Your missing attention a sound wave
Deafeningly explosive to my ears.
To you, the brittle layers underneath my hide
Are playgrounds for your piercing eyes—
My flesh freezes over and turns clear
By the sheer blizzard of your neglect.

You stare into me like I was an abyss—
A shallow pit, a dark nothing—
And carry on believing it so.
My holes are things to be respected
Yet they are all you ever look through.
Your apathy has my vicious soul
Suspended in a restless air
Until I feel so unreal that I evaporate
And truly, truly, feel despair.

My home died 8 years ago and I
Never understood why—
No flames that licked our gingerbread house to the ground;
No earth-shattering wave that swept us off our feet;
No ghosts to keep us company—
Just a deep, lingering silence growing
Louder, and louder, more defined
As the hollow floors whined
In rebellion of the years glazed by.