She was an ordinary girl
Who followed recipes
About marriage and kids.
She baked a cookie-cutter lifestyle
Sprinkled with happiness.
She lived behind a picket fence,
Away from certain dragons
Out to destroy naïve girls.

But the dragons came early
And burned her recipes.
She grew up divorced
From sex.
Eggs fell off the shelves
Inside her womb.
Her dream house crumbled
And barbed wire replaced
The picket fence.

They rebuilt her house
With disillusion.
All doors and windows
Were purposely omitted.
They stuffed her
With fantasies
From TV and magazines.
They recruited pawns
To checkmate her
And she fell deeper
Into the unreal.

Desperate for an exit,
She swallowed a few pills.
She took two more,
Repeated this ritual
Every half hour.

The walls around her
suddenly collapsed.
The foundation enlarged
To devour her,
But the dragons fell instead.
The nightmare ended,
But the girl never woke up.
She was found on the bathroom floor,
Soaked in blood. 

Patricia Carragon’s publication credits include BigCityLit, Clockwise Cat, Danse Macabre, Home Planet News, Levure littéraire, Mad Hatters’ Review, and others. She curates the Brooklyn-based Brownstone Poets and edits its annual anthology.