Member-only story
Marionetta
A Poem
watch her dance,
her limbs folding
in the most graceful poses,
straining at pretty gestures
while her lips are a flat line
betraying the simmer inside
steps flit and flirt,
a choreography in phases
all too nuanced to copy,
but she’s a marvel
to the eyes that linger
on all her plastic parts
there’s no glory here
in this space with no music,
where each moment is timed
to someone else’s bitter ends —
watch closely, quick,
before she blinks out of being,
a minute lost to an hourglass
a puppet master might delight
from the way she moves,
such beauty bottled
for a short consumption —
the strings pulled taut,
the dancer caught in a web
her clockwork heart,
what a fickle thing it might be —
but who are we to say,
humans trapped in a cycle,
barely able to make the seconds count
as the sun…
