The Epitaph on the Social Portrait of Naiveté

These were the portraits that hung on the walls of that teenager’s
refuge, the address tied to lying under heavy sheets; relinquishing
sweat on every inch of her body dreaming past noon afraid of morning’s
bright against window shades, pricking the pores on nuisance’s
expression, sixteen, headed towards immature wrinkling.

These were the portraits on the partition of that teenager’s refuge, the
address tied to the corner where wallpaper symbolic of Eden’s garden
disbanded from stucco; Monday afternoons graduated kneeling against
that curvature with her face buried in hands, praying. Gunmetal
eyeliner expired with the slimmest wet of moans charred from high
school insecurity suffocating her pulse.

These portraits vandalized her progress. Their proofs examine
silence forced upon youth’s canvas. Her outline was painted
with tempera; in truth she bleeds thick oil separated from social
waters, trusting of its thinness despite extent of its unknown
wave.

Someone chose to paint these portraits with
watercolors, where slight erasure may be easily caused by
the river of a victim’s cries.