by Isabel Pieterson, UWCM
16th of December, 2022
our birth – no more than a mere quotidian event
how we’re born: forced to wear a contrived smile on our faces,
stitched together. made to be gentle. words turned to cotton:
dismissed, neglected, imperceptible. blood interrupted.
we’re emotionally inarticulate; tossed into a pile, ridiculed for being ordinary.
as we pose for incomers, faces strained from beaming, we’re greeted by wry looks;
our reaction kept impassive – that’s what we’re taught to do.
as always, you demand more;
perpetual desires: so fickle but we’re peasants for acceptance. that’s how we survive.
sewn to our womb: voices brittle in a gnawed enclosure
sat sluggish, brawling for your embrace
if only we had a paltry chance to escape.
Breathe. this conversation ain’t over.
forced to lament for our sanity, our muffled cries futile;
legs limp from your absence, spines biliously arched
our plastic corpses interrogated, names lying placid in a machine.
yet again: a redundant cycle of our deposition.
finding our remnants will be no difficult task
for those gulls have sucked out our ingot, mouths repulsively brimming with gilt
eyes fetched on the profit;
not a wince of goodwill, just a grimace of desire
and here we are sat slumped,
loosely chained to the murmurs of the volatile,
our misery
sculpted by those companies.
