I cope with things very well (which is a lie)

because I am an hysterical Victorian woman 

clawing at my own face on a fainting chaise-lounge 

and smacking my plate of oxtail toast off the table. 

 

I am a rabid hyena that bites my own tail and tears 

leaving a gore-sized crater in my flesh 

which weeps blood and other substances. 

 

Oh I am terrified of the day 

you find out what I am— 

when you follow the smears of blood 

 

all the way down the corridor, Victorian drapery 

catching fire from the temperature of it all 

the walls epileptic with heatwaves 

 

I am down the end of this corridor 

sweating profusely in my own self-created furnace 

like a red madwoman in an attic 

 

every metaphor I try and use to explain myself 

just ends up back at a woman who's insane 

or an animal, whatever the difference is. 

 

I'm sorry. You don't deserve this, but I do. 

Shapes are moving in my red wallpaper 

shapes that are shaped like me.