Elisabeth Horan lives and writes in Vermont.

Simile Free
By Elisabeth Horan

I am the lady with quills in her skin.
I repel anyone who attempts to come in.
They don’t prick like anything.

I have a scent worse than skunk—
My life, it makes me want to jump!
It doesn’t smell like anything.

In the day our downfall
is flogging my skull—

Come night I wash
the cold, dead dreams
off of walls.

My haunts lead to nowhere,
try not to stare
at hands torn from wrists,
grasping roots as I slip.
In here, nothing hurts like anything.

I never wanted to show these quills.
I never wanted this stench,
this Anonymous Hell.

I wanted to have friends.
I wanted to tell funny stories;
not to make people feel
angsty and itchy.
This want? It feels like nothing.

But as I age, I know that I –
that this
is not going to change.

This me.
Which is not a simile of anything.