Follow Me by Heidi Slettedahl

Follow me, will you?
Watch my movement and my ways with averted eyes
pretending.

You are a child,
my size.

You frighten me.

I’ve been waiting for you.

The words, so sinister,
drop from enchanting lips
another has kissed and set aside.

Am I to be punished for her cruelty?
She laughed at you oh god how could she
She mimicked you, she taunted you, the bitch!

She deserves to be punished, yes to die
She will.
Today.
Tomorrow, too.

She dies daily.
Her corpse has a hundred different faces,
Faces shocked and still.
No longer laughing.
No longer crying.
Not at you.

Heidi Slettedahl is an academic and a US-UK dual national who goes by a slightly different name professionally. She has been published in small literary journals, including Red Eft Review, Not Very Quiet, Picaroon Poetry, Vita Brevis, Dream Noir, Visual Verse, Ink Sweat and Tears and Autumn Sky Daily.