Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Poem by MARINA GIPPS

Awoke with an alarm clock meow.
After the little man on the train
Cut my spaghetti straps
In front of my mother and my father.
Handed me a dull scissors
To defend myself as if a big favor.
Awoke terrified not knowing what happened next.
Awoke forever trying to escape
With a used scissors crusted with blood as if a dagger.
When only the other night it was a dull wooden spoon.
Myself, wondering the potential harm of a spoon.
As I tried to dig out of a tunnel without a single light,
With the cackling cough of a coal miner
Prepared for death so many years.