Squashed Pine Cones and Motarboards

Suits resurrected from musty cupboards;
Faces plastered.
Driving on driving
till cars flock and lie like sardines,

We are all a reservoir of ill-fitting gowns and mortarboards.
I have never been so smart yet felt so stupid
like a gaudy circus attraction;
bulbous eyes and a painted smile.

I am a moth withering in the light of the camera,
We are the perfect family,
Me; the model daughter who sparkles and shines
with a vulgar smile plastered over my shame,
academic slights juxtaposed through history.
They are the jury that form my verdict

No one saw my chaffed my flesh
when I stared at the moon at 4am
and wished it would swallow me.
The hollow eyed corpse I became
as sleeplessness consumed me.
I am tried and ridiculous;
The applause is an apocalypse
Drowning my exuberance.

I am letters and numbers
revealed in photos ,
dropped on our doormat like bombs two weeks later.
We are all so smart and stupid,
cameras are back biting, malicious school girls.

I will use blood, tears and bile
that bought me to this day
to paint my portrait.
My sound
my feet.
Pounding along the toe path
to sooth my rage.

My thoughts you;
And the February blackness.
That swallowed me while
I choked on grief
and tried to tell the shadows
that I loved you.
I placed you in this scene,
now you are gone for good.

I am not the numbers they plant on me.
They are the unexploded mines
littering my psyche.

I sat opposite a psychologist
and waited for him to clear the bile from his throat
before he dropped the greatest bombshell of all.
My mind curdling as my thoughts contracted.

I am no more than the blood tears and bile that bought me here.
Nothing more than the snails I trod on.
No better than the pinecones I squashed.
as I left the playground for good.