Dickens in a Sundress

I have lived many times

Too many to count.

My past

Resembles a bookshelf

Full of eclectic stories

Misprints of classics

With missing pages

Organized by color

Instead of chronologically

Or by subject

I was born old,

But,

Unlike Merlin,

I did not age sdrawkcab

I burst from my mother's brain

Fully formed

But with no armor

Or wisdom

To protect me

I had find those myself

I had a voice

No one could hear

Like Kassandra of Troy

I made my home

In a small cell

With no escape

Yet the nightmares

Always found

Their way in

I was punished

A thousand times

For crimes

I was not guilty of

Surrounded by stone men

Without even snakes

For company

I pushed those stone men up a hill

But there were always more

And the task proved impossible

I was left in the woods

More than once

Collecting many tales

While I wandered

I held up

Cutouts of animals

To reflect shadows

On cave walls

So others

Could find

Their own

Enlightenment

Even if that meant

Giving up

My own

I cleaned up

After hundreds of evil

Step mothers

Though I never saw

Any prince

I never found my dragon

My space ship

My wardrobe

My self portrait

My slippers

My doctor

My incarnation

My secret garden

My mountain top

My talking animals

I was my own hero

Despite the fact

That I would prefer not to

Be

I have spent my entire life locked away

in my own head,

in a broom closet

covered with flaking yellow wallpaper

and my heart beating

under the

floorboards;

my ill spirit sobbing

where no one can hear.

Looking back in time

All I see

Are books

On a shelf

I would rather not

Read again.

...Yet they are all I have