Siren

I am a mirage
born into a cradle
of opium dreams.
At night you sit
in your concave room,
basking in the violet
artificial glow
of the television screen,
watching me dance
across the frame.
But I tell you now,
if you were to peel back
my skin like wrapping paper
and rip the russet muscles
from my bones,
force open the doors
of my rib cage
as if opening a cupboard,
expecting to find
a magical land,
you would discover instead
my shrunken, cobwebbed heart;
her face turned away,
with a sign hanging around her neck
that reads;
Back in ten years,
after I have washed
the blood from
my hands.