I wore my mind like a corset—tight, laced, unseen—
while the world asked me to smile with lipstick teeth
and stir the soup without stirring the storm inside.
There were mornings I woke as if embalmed,
already dressed in the hush of death's silk slip,
no reason, no riot—just a fog that would not lift.
The walls of my room pulsed like veins
and the mirror whispered lies in a female voice:
You are failing. You are too much. You are not enough.
I was the soft thing breaking beneath
a century of silence stitched into my sex,
taught to hush the howl and cradle the ache.
My hands shook when folding towels.
My heart stuttered at the scent of soap.
There was no name then for the madness.
Just "hysteria," like a curse tucked under my skirt,
and doctors who told me to marry or pray.
No pills yet. No lifeboats. Just poems or the end.
So I chose the door
that closed softer than the others.
Not for drama—
but for rest, for mercy,
for the silence to finally match
the silence within me.
If I'd been born later, maybe
there'd be lithium instead of letters.
But time gave me verse,
and verse gave me wings too torn to fly.
straight face
tight laced
betrayed
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
POTD July 15, 2025
Number 2 HB, Number 2 HB, Number 2 HB,
I have know you all my life.
Your slender ORANGE silhouette, dressed in a neat fashion.
Tight laced, tightened up, and tarnished.
So put together.
You break easily under pressure.
SNAP!
I break easily under pressure.
SNAP!
The melancholy, the LEAD, the dread.
Sharpened is my mind like the point, DULL is the enemy.
We are quite the same you and I,
we both unravel after every transgression.
Smaller and smaller we become till there is NUB.
Where are you number 1 HB?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.