See Dede was a troublemaker

But now she’s subdued

Now she’s silent

Invisible

When she was younger her father thought her eyes were too small so he went ahead and made them bigger

She’d come to school all quiet and blue

But the teachers never asked her where she got her face tattoos

Because Dede was a troublemaker

When Dede was really little her eyes held oceans

Before she got swallowed

She loved to read books

The kind that people would stutter over the words but she drank them instead of water

Lived off only that and air

Became so light people told her she was going to go places

Then her father stopped leaving the house,

Money and her mother stopped coming in

Stress came about in violent ways

Black and blue became the pigment of her skin

He pulled her down from the sky since he was drowning

With each pull some of the ocean fell from her eyes.

It rained for weeks

Now she’s grounded.

Trouble.

She started drinking things other than water but she didn’t notice because it’s all the same colorless color

And she started to breathe things other than air, trying to get high like she used to be

But clouds only held white and gray and her eyes were forever red

See Dede was a troublemaker

Living below sea level where the blue and shadows are supposed to be dancing across her skin

She lives to forget the sky but she craves it

She tries to fly sometimes

But tying yourself to a rope to float is hardly science

She’s a walking juxtaposition

Carves her skin to make the pain go away

Keeps a tally on how much she hates herself on her legs

Her house can’t stop playing the same scream soundtrack

Her happiness is a ghost limb

As she grew her hatred did too

She’s always tired from waking up

She went further into the darkness

The more she sank the more she shrank

Until she was so small people stepped over her trying not to get themselves dirty

Nobody wanted to help the trouble

Nothing was said and nothing was done

Something was said and nothing was done

Nothing was done, so she did nothing

She started to believe her father

So she became nothing