Seven Stairs

At the top of the stairs a little girl stood,

holding her plush giraffe and a blank expression.

Her eyes were locked below at her parents hushed

conversation about the news.

A little girl...

Barely a few months...

Died...

Parents are...

How...

The little girl's knees were locked,

Her limbs became metal

And heart a ceased machine

Needing of work.

She slowly spiraled

because what if that was her

And she didn't know it?

A baby,

barely a foot into the world

being struck with something worse

than a child's fear of the dark.

To be layer forth on the infant's soul

of all places.

It was a robbery;

worse than gunpoint

like how it is at the listening girl's

town bank.

What if she-

at the top of the stairs-

had another life before now,

that she could have remembered if she 

had open eyes

longer than the first cry?

Will the baby

be okay

in the lack of space,

time,

and senses?

Did the girl ever experience that?

Is that why her lungs are deflating with

these images flashing through her mind?

The baby on the new can't scream even if there is an afterlife

they haven't even said their first word.

Babbles protruding from stained lips

is a curse no one ever asked for.

What if the toothpaste in the scared girl's

mouth was the last things she would ever taste?

What if she would drop dead like the baby,

only to be found without memory or

feelings of the page before.

The girl turned around to go back to the bathroom

florescent lights highlighting the toothpaste

being spit into the sink below.

The stairs are gone,

stairs the little girl climbs each day.

She had climbed 7 stairs this time,

has she ever made it that far before?