What The Hell Is Girl in a Cage Anyway?

Girl in a Cage, the title of my blog, seemed like a good idea at the time.  I was just getting started with blogging, Donorboy was fresh in people's minds, and I thought the pervy sound might get me a lot of hits when I was trying to build readership.

Anyway, "Girl in a Cage" is the title of a poem that Rosalind writes in Donorboy.  It goes like this:

Girl in a cage
Guards her own grave
She's safe from the wind and the rain

They carved her from rock
And set her on top
She's a monument to their pain

While six feet below
Where the coffin-worms go
There's a cage of a different kind

With some shards of bone
And a scrap of dress
Which is all that she's left behind

Two girls in two cages
But there's no girl at all:
To say that she's here is a lie

No cage can protect you
The future neglects you
And everything ends when you die.

Cheery stuff, huh?  Later, this became the lyrics to a metal song.  In the book.  Not in life. That I know of.  If you are in a metal band that  has made a song out of this, please send me some royalties.

Rosalind is a creature of my imagination, but the girl in a cage is not.  Her name is Gracie Allen.  She died when she was four years old, and her family put this up in Forest Hills Cemetery in memory of her. If you're ever at Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston and want to visit Gracie, she's near the corner of Elm and Lobelia.