My shadow took my hands away.
It strung me along with strings and hooks
inside my flesh. An empty marionette
dangling limply on ribbons
and freshly harvested dermis
tied around my face as if a mask
glued on with double sided tape.
It barely held onto me, but I couldn’t seem
to shake it off and it didn’t seem
to want to peel away
in all its layers.
My shadow pulled a string to open
my square wooden lips
assembled by rusty hinges that squeaked
every time they moved. My mouth
was no longer a mouth
but a black hole, a useless portal.
With the movement of a finger, it clamped shut.

Ariella Tania Amanda

 

Ariella Tania Amanda is a twenty-years-old Creative Writing student at Bangor University. Her poems have been published in the very first issue of Cape Magazine. Despite being a non-native English speaker, she walks on the path of a writer, persevering as the passion of story-telling breathes within her.

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