​I am the one they feverishly hide.
​A disgrace of respected loins,
behind fashioned walls inside.
​Born with limbs that withered in  
​the womb of shame, birthed uneven legs
​that limps and lames. My mother
shown pity and hints of care, but
her face as she looks away... in obvious
​regret and all things unfair.
The higher born of old families rooted in
​Victorian mansions as I.... is where
​you can find little rooms as these well hidden
​where we, the unknown lived and most often died.

A small window facing a wall was my only view, 
​along with tree tops of pines as they hopefully grew,
​but never outside, a wish of non sense I sagaciously knew.

The mute maid, with head bowed would service
my chamber pot but once a day. My ankles swollen
from bed irons that chain me to these
wooden floors where my dirty bed roll lay.
As a child I recall the chains being much heavier than I,
perhaps more than the burden my parents 
endured in their everyday lie.
The bricks that forced me in, also allowed me faint
pleasures of my family I'd hear, but not I and why?
​because I am grotesquely ugly,
in admittance I sigh....
​I don't believe my siblings knew of me at all.
​Could they love me as I love them, if in their
​innocence they saw?.... no... in sibling love,
let them keep their unknown names and perfect
​faces distant beyond my darkened hall.

Father rarely visited my imprisoned and stench
stained room. When he did, it was always in routine
of drunken rage. My back bared obediently awaiting
its doom. Accompanied by whips and sticks of wood,
I'd crawl into my mind where I was at my prettiest
and took his hate as best I could. 
​When inebriation played its tired part...on my
floor he'd sometimes lie in sleep. Beside my father
I coiled and softly place his arm around me, without
sounding a single peep. Beneath hateful hands of pretend,
I'd fall in thankful feels of weep.

​I had no fantasies or dreams to escape to in the
contorts of my mind. Impossible...how could I?..
if not seen or known of anything beyond my room
to remember or rewind. Insanity played its cruelty
on me from time to time, but it was a welcomed 
friend aside from the roaches and rats that
accepted me in my filth and grime.

​The awaited day is here that I no more fear.
Alas, father speaks a kind word and breathes...
" The snow is falling do you see it forming on the
​branches of tree?"..... "yes father"...
a first kiss on my head, when his angered reflection in
​my window I see... as he swung his merciful
hammer to end his disappointment in me. 

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