By Randi Drake

Lisbon High School

My body is a topiary.

A beautiful illusion on the outside,

Tangled, twisted, rough within.

I will never escape this maze,

Of emotion and flesh.

Or change my man made shape.

There is a thick layer of bark that is my skin,

It itches me like sandpaper shingles.

I will start my life in adolescence,

Unaware of reality, innocent.

One day I will skip with joy, and fall with sorrow,

When the curtain opens and I meet the ugly world.

Then old age hits and,

I can only hobble, hunched over.

My body is a topiary,

Growing, shrinking, withering.

With my failing heart my life will lay still,

Like a cinder block, never moving stiff,

As someone carries it to it’s resting place.

Nothing will ever rustle in these

tangled branches again.