Statue

Cement up to the neck & my head packed with unsaid words. A gullet full of pebbles, a mouth of cast concrete- I am stuck in a lovelessness so thick, it seems my natural element. My mouth closes on stones. Hand frozen to my chin, my back a question mark, my heart soldered to its arteries, my feet planted in grass that cannot grow, The Thinker ponders ten more years of this: a woman living the life of a statue. Break free! Melt the metal in love's cauldron, open doors, eyes, heart, those frozen ventricles, those stuck tongues, those stuttering dependencies. When the statue walks, will the world dissolve? When she shakes her shoulders, will the sky shrug & skitter off in space? Or will the clouds cluster to cover her, & the blue wind gather at her shoulders & the men streak by like jet trails in the air, utterly ephemeral?