shadow-silver-08

The floor is covered with ribbons of broken hair – snapped, dry, dirty hair. She watches it break and die every day; even when it groans from her scalp, she no longer cries for it. It's only hair. She sits in the corner, with another of her headaches, closing her unwashed eyes and praying for sleep. When a man's voice calls to her from outside, she jumps. No one speaks to her. She is one hundred feet from the ground and no one can see her face. Heart quickening - a newborn sparrow that must learn to fly or else succumb to a hungry mouth -  she struggles with her locked bones to stand and run to the window. She only moves s