Vanishing Act
Instructions for Disappearing
You seal me away in this tiny box
deep in the abyss
of your lonely, tortured heart
until you can’t feel me,
can’t hear my laughter,
can’t see my smile,
can’t taste my words and thoughts,
can’t sense any part of me,
save my absence.
Will you condemn me
to death in this box,
deprived of oxygen,
no room to stretch myself,
no freedom to be me?
And what if I escape, pick the lock,
wedge the door open, shrink myself down
to slip through this tiny slit of an opening,
pour myself out into you, evaporating
into thin air so that when you finally
excavate the best of yourself,
tunneling down to this little jewel
buried deeper than Dante’s ninth circle
in your heart, you find it empty,
the echo of your prisoner’s laughter
shaking you from your core
while I dance out of your darkness
into my light
About the Creator
Harper Lewis
I'm a weirdo nerd who’s extremely subversive. I like rocks, incense, and all kinds of witchy stuff. Intrusive rhyme bothers me.
I’m known as Dena Brown to the revenuers and pollsters.
MA English literature, College of Charleston
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More stories from Harper Lewis and writers in Poets and other communities.
Letter to my Daughter
You have a choice to make here: are you going to continue the cycle, or are you going to break it? Keeping your son away from me hurts him; there’s no question about that. I thought you were being hurt, and I was trying to protect you, not punish anyone when I kept your grandfather away from you. I have said that I was wrong and I am sorry, but there was never any malice involved.
By Harper LewisExclusive • 2 months ago
Comments (3)
Fuck. Yeah. Feels familiar. Well done lass
This piece is hauntingly beautiful — it captures the pain of emotional imprisonment and the power of reclaiming one’s freedom with stunning imagery. The transformation from confinement to liberation feels both tragic and empowering.
Again....WOW! I've been so wrapped up in my own shit I haven't seen anyone else's hurt and I felt this 💔