Fractured Family

She's more fragile than the petals of the violets in her grandmother's yard
At seventeen she still wears a plastic hello kitty necklace around her neck
Her voices is inaudible but her posture speaks of shattered hopes and dream
Too many thick salt water tears have lined grooves in her pale white cheeks
But when we ask her if she's okay she whispers about perfect diamond snowflakes
As she rocks back and forth and speaks to the voices that only she can hear
When you pull close for a hug her whole body stiffens and her eyes get too full

She used to have so much life to her that she crackled with electric static
But that was before her mind died a slow and painful death as the disease took hold
That was before the doctors who told us about schizophrenia and its chronic nature
Now her college admission essays sit untouched and under a pile of paperwork
that the hordes of psychiatrists and therapists and counselors have given us to fill out

I used to write poetry about the beauty of scattering rainbows after a storm
and the power of wishing stars that can make all your dreams come true
Now I write of the lost utopian horizons that have been drifting further away
Every successive day that I stare at my daughter who's consumed by a broken reality