Shelf

SHELF © Gayna Rose Madder

 

Living a life beside myself

Never making myself the centre of my own world

Suddenly looking in through a pane of glass

Seeing myself upon a shelf

Labelled as something limited but useful;

Something I never chose to be thought of as

 

I really want to run away, but don’t know where I’ll go.

I don’t think I’ll find solace anywhere I know.

I really want to go and hide, to lock myself away;

But there is no corner dark enough to quite exclude today.

 

Living a life beside myself

Functioning only when and if I’m asked to

Like an old game that nobody wants to play

Choosing to stay upon that shelf

Next to the box of broken dolls and toy parts

Waiting to be put back together one day

 

Operating the controls without owning the equipment

Or even finding out what it’s meant to do

Is not the way to steer myself away from troubled places

I don’t want to be rescued from what I’ve turned into

 

I wish that I was somewhere else, and didn’t have to fear

But nowhere I can think of is far enough from here

I really want to run from life, as though asleep, or dead,

But something wakes inside me, and makes me live, instead

 

(Of) living my life upon a shelf

Waiting for someone else to brush the dust off

I’m starting to realise that I’m able to

Live for myself and through myself

Making myself the centre of my own world

And really finding out what I can do;

Really finding out what I can do.