Paper Dolls

• Paper Dolls

Paper Dolls

Though the floor plans have changed
I still feel you emerging
From the crowded laughter rooms
Into the soft piano music

Am I equal strange to you
With an added century of devices
Or just an outline sketch of a nude
Barely warm against the canvas?

If I could paint my breaths unread
I'd string them round like paper dolls
And hold a sea shell to my eyes
To witness the drowning

Who are these wafer figurines
Solid as a weave and yet so brittle
Joined so hand in hand
You can't tell where it began
Anyone who's in the line
Is in the middle

No, our floor plans are not the same
But I still can feel you breathing
And are the rooms you nightly tread
Those that were, or the ones
I'm yet to be in?

If I could paint my breaths unread
I'd string them round like paper dolls
And hold a sea shell to my eyes
To witness the drowning

© Brendan Bonsack
January 2014

1. The Sky that Came Before
2. Cauliflower Scans
3. When the Shovels Come to Find us
4. Weeds
5. Nineteen Sixty Nine
6. Bent Piano
7. Paper Dolls
8. Damned Poets
9. A Deep Forget
10. We Were Stones

The Sky that Came Before
Released November 2013