A/N: Written for the QLFC Daily Prophet Issue 6 Poem Competition
Prompt: (character) Petunia Evans Dursley
Inspired quite a bit by the songs New Romantics by Taylor Swift and River Run Red by Rachel Rose Mitchell
She flinches with every brick their careless words throw at her
until they are so commonplace that she doesn't even notice them,
yet her heart is bruised; not by the cruelty of fists, but of comparisons
to the charming girl with fire in her eyes and lightning in her tongue
that Petunia never has, never can, and never will live up to —
for even when she ignores the unwitting blows, they land.
Her sister looks skywards as she dances among shooting stars,
but her gaze stays grounded and focused on the wooden front door
that promises to lead her out into a world without bricks and blows
and where bruised hearts can breathe and take shelter and heal;
she studies and she learns and she works and she marries,
and once she leaves that place of torment, she never, ever looks back.
For she has used the bricks they threw to build a castle of her own
that wraps around her heart and keeps it safe from enemy fire
with walls as strong as adamantine and a moat that's red with blood;
she swears that she will never again let that sort close enough to hurt her,
so she surrounds herself with normal people living normal lives of normalcy
and no matter how much that boy bangs on the gates, they remain barred.