Miscarriage
By Anne E Thompson

You stand as the beautiful girl I loved,
But I know,
Inside you are deformed by grief.
A hunched old woman,
Clutching emotions tightly,
Lest another should shatter,
Into artery slicing shards.
Pools of laughter have bled from your eyes,
They harbour the shadows of ghosts.
The dead are in everything you see.
Your words, sane, pleasant, kind,
Carefully constructed in your mind,
Never touching your heart.
The core of you is gone.
I live beside the puppet you.
And wonder if you,
The real you,
Can grow again.