A Lesson in Romantics
-Mayday Parade

I am a machine and a skitzo.
A savage cave woman
and a drone.
I scratch at every movement
Every wrong word
Every memory,
Like the beaten stray cat
on the street corner.

Never enough oil to grease my joints
Never enough medication to silence the storm,
I am stiff  and enraged.

Swallowed by the quicksand
enveloping me for so long,
One fourth of my life
devoted to your every need,
One fourth of my life
destroyed by your massive greed.

You were a Dragon,
a Siren,
a Leech.
For five years  I never knew,
I never imagined  the traitor  was you.

Danielle Lowery is a Senior at Chatham University. Her fiction has been published in The Minor Bird. Danielle has studied Creative Writing at both Sweet Briar College and Chatham University.