Conceptual Artist • Jungian Scholar • Writer

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WALLED WOMAN
By Tracy Ferron

Touch me, she whispers. Touch me so I know I exist.
​
With one eye gazing inward and one looking out at the world. You are suspended, immobilized, frozen.
 
Cherish me, she demands, gnashing her teeth.  She craves candlelit understanding, her heart hollow.
 
When did this sacrifice begin? Your hair a tangled river teeming with bugs, unkempt, your still hands, fingernails curling in loops, setting in the plaster.
 
Set, set, she cries, let this wall set so I don’t have to make this continual choice to stay.  Make it so.  Seal my fate.
 
Like an earthworm pressed on all sides by damp earth, the bricks support her.  She welcomes their chilly pressure.  The cement fills her mouth, her ears, presses against her breasts.  She is held, suspended, known only to God.
 
This house is built upon my bones and blood. Was it not I who created life, mixing the mortar of my own immurement?  I, who know the moon and the mystery, danced with the sun.  The blisters on my hands became scars, my fingerprints illegible.
 
The poet continues to immure herself.  Color dims.  It is harder to conjure the magic.  Over and over she tells herself this was her choice. 
 
When you know a deeper truth, they call you mad—she cries.
 
These solid walls shelter her children.  Yet she yearns to pierce the surface, pierce her own skin, let her fluids seep out and merge with it all.
 
Touch me, she whispers.  Touch me so I know I exist.