Quiet as a mouse

The shy poet
carries a mouthful of words
in her back pocket,
sometimes she neatly folds them
into tiny little stars
and makes paper wishes
on the blank midnight sky

She has much to say,
though her teeth are dressed in barbed wire
and her vocal cords
were ferociously struck by lightening,
now that bashful tongue lays twisted
and chained to the dingy floor,
pathetically tangled around a poem

Lately she's been chewing on cigarette butts
and ink pens for fun,
yet she hides her soul
in a scruffy old backpack
so the hands of angels
can quickly discard her silly thoughts
before any mortal can see through
her own translucent shell

(as if she were an open book)