Wings sheared off with scissors

Blood dripping off your crimson feathers.

Legs bound together with infinitely knotted rope

Burns mark your skin, angry and biting.

The wrong air forced through your larynx

Words nothing but razor blades on your tongue.

Drink your Cherry Cola in a steel glass.

Take a sip from your friend’s cup

It burns your throat like battery acid.

Discard every label, throw it in the fire

Watch the edges curl up and turn into orange embers

That glow with shame hot and stifling

That send sweat trickling down your forehead.

Drink your Cherry Cola in a steel glass.

Smash every glass bottle

Hide the shards under the bed

Take them out in the dead of night

Where nothing remains but

A silence that strangles you in your own thoughts

Pray no one asks about the holes in the trash bag.

Drink your Cherry Cola in a steel glass.

Deny, derail, distract

All those who wonder about your cup.

Forget what it is yourself.

Lies affix your limbs to your side with their silvery thread

Let the spider’s web entangle you.

Paint your life in monochrome.

Pour your glass of Cherry Cola out.

Refill it with Water