Allison Tovey

​Instagram: @suzybish0p 

allisonmtovey.wixsite.com/allison

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Women in The Wallpaper


The yellow clogs my lungs and files down my nails.
The woman in the room, locked in the room,
stares all day through the pattern, through me.
She senses me, sees me, fears me,
hopes I will vanish in the daylight,
she does not know we are the other’s freedom.


The woman and I creep together, twins so mirrored
it is hard to tell who is the fracture of whom.
I try to hold her hand as we choke for air,
bound with gags of different cloth
that shut us up just the same.
She never reaches back, and the paper gets tighter,


crowded as our numbers begin to grow,
manifested in her solitude.
We twist and twitch, shake so violently the paper has a pulse,
like its alive the way we’re alive,
the way she will come alive when she rips us free,
her body making space to hold us all inside her.


A coven of hidden women clawing for liberation,
to claim a sister silenced.