Sincerity, by Sharonna Johnson

I bring you Sincerity,
a girl damned by fate,
cursed to forever seek love
from those who could not
love her.
If affection and fondness be
nourishment, then this girl
surely died of starvation.
Born with a bark-like growth
in the center of her face and
deeply shaded eyes that hid,
not well, pain and sorrow,
Sincerity’s parents found her
to be a stake in the eye.
And so they locked her away in a
decorated dungeon where she lived
and died in ten years time.
During life, she had never known
the sun, never met the moon.
For company, she kept a burly rat
and a tatter-haired glass doll.
A doll with a most perfect face that
she often admired for hours and days,
fingers tracing every dip and curve
'til the skin did numb.
With dying breaths, she called for something--
anything akin to a kiss on the cheek
or a pat on the head.
Something to tell her someone was there
in the dark.
Anything to relieve the loneliness for but
a few short breaths.
Sincerity called and called to no answer
until short breaths shallowed
and became none.
Dead in the bed of the decorated dungeon,
the girl was found and quickly buried.
The bark-like growth had spread, split
and thickened—a face devoured—the body,
her body unfathomly horrible to look upon,
thus excusing the disregard for
a proper funeral.
The girl was put to rest by a groundskeeper
and mourned by none.
Doomed to desire, but never
know, feel, relish
in, for, and with love--
most unfortunate.
Yet so is the fate of some
and so the fate of Sincerity.