Mannequins Can Almost Cry If You Listen

I retrieve you from the garbage bin behind the Women of All Sizes dress shop.
With eyes wide, chilling as the double life of a seamstress running threads
 around her victims, sowing their mouths shut, you seem to stare over me.
Perhaps you know I'll salvage you, or maybe rescue a part of me I can't contain.
Carry you into my warm condo of Expressionistic paintings of Pop divas,
outdated books on C code. Glue your joints back together, leave you some slack
in certain places, try to lessen the possibility of friction. You can be
my inner vision when I grow hoarse. I am in between loves. My last one
could never pronounce my name correctly. The next one will be all hard-knocks,
will harbor no soft weapons that discharge a lingering death. Please read
between the lines, Miss Woman in the Window Who Can Never Want Anything More.
In the morning, I will dismantle you, will leave you at the curb in a heap
of incongruous parts. I am so envious of the silence between your ears.
Between mine, there are only words in wrong sizes, women's voices undoing me,
ordering me to leave, to start from scratch.

 

Mannequin Envy: Materials Management »

 

 

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Kyle Hemmings has art work in The Stray Branch, Euphenism, Uppagus, The Bitchin' Kitsch, Black Market Lit, and upcoming work in Convergence. He loves pre-punk garage bands of the '60s, Manga comics, and urban photography/art.