There was a Heart Wrapped up in a Poem

Don’t touch me.

Because hypothetically we are all

monster-makers,

but I’m not flirting with galvanism

today. 

Furthermore,

I scorn your vivisection-as-verse,

and if you speak to me of phrenology,

I will take it as a sign that we—

whatever this sewn semblance of you and I must mean—

are at an end,

a parting

of ways. 

Good. 

To make myself clear:

I am cleansing myself of pseudoscience

and Romanticism alike, I

frankly think that your poems don’t have a shot in hell

of saving the world

because you are all cerebrum afire

and no soul, trying

to substitute passion

for a conscience, and the sad thing is

that you fool some

but I have been Awakened, and 

I see. 

Blindingly. Astutely. 

Pervasively. 

You, with your intellectualism

and your whims, 

change 

the system only so it benefits

you more, 

Shock a girl — 

kill her, stuff her, 

seal

her heart up, and tell yourself

that you know what love is an instant

before your vision tunnels and we

begin

again. 

Fuck

your pretend fatherhood. You

will never know what it is to love and lose

anything but 

yourself. 

Write me off

as hysterical. 

Lock me

into a mould in 

your mind, bite

my name out of your memory.

Reduce me to a remnant

of a nightmare, 

a snippet-bogeyman

with breasts 

and a womb. 

They’re still not yours. 

You 

will never touch me

again. 

I will be a monster

gladly. Anything

to set me apart

from you. 

About the Author

Julianna Reidell is a first-year English/Creative Writing major at Arcadia University. She has previously received gold and silver medals for her humor writing and poetry from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards national competition. Her work can also be found in the magazines Stone Soup and Teen Ink, as well as on the teen comedy website The Milking Cat.