GloPoWriMo Day 13: Bodysnatcher

Prompt: Today, I challenge you to write a non-apology for the things you’ve stolen. Maybe it’s something as small as your sister’s hairbrush (or maybe it was your sister’s boyfriend!) Regardless, I hope this sly prompt generates some provocative verse for you.

I'm not doing very well with this whole writing thing, given life keeps getting in the way. I'm half of a mind to just give up entirely, but today the prompt made me think of the grave robbers, the bodysnatchers in old England where they'd dig up bodies for doctors who needed them for medical experiments.

So I decided steal myself.

Bodysnatcher

I am the traitor, the Hanged Man:

I am a byword, society's upside-down fool

A mind reduced to a rattling skeleton

Hanging on a gibbet

Gutted from stem to stern

My heart a shriveled apple core

A cautionary tale on display.

I cut myself down and steal myself back:

My thoughts, my words, my space, my voice

The things I’ve been told to bury, to hide

Sealed up in a coffin of shame.

(Single, stupid, ladylike, ugly -

Every adjective a nail in the lid.

Judgements weigh me down like lead.

I sink. I am dead weight.)

I am a guerilla, a bodysnatcher, a rogue.

I am no thief – I take back only

What’s been stolen from me.

I reclaim my life.

I mark the shape of me in the air

And cut space for this body, this me:

I take up room, I stand

Forcing you to see me -

An inconvenient obstruction

In an elevator door

Holding your mind open

Preventing it from closing.