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My Prison
My Prison
My mind has become its own prison
Tally marks carved to count the days
Bars on my eyelids to keep me locked
Corners filled with cobwebs and dust
The center scratched and worn
From my attempts to tunnel out
But the walls can’t be torn
Not with a sledgehammer or a drill
No matter how many times my head slams against drywall
The walls won’t budge
Trust me I’ve tried
I remember when my cage was built
My mother smiling at me as she set concrete slabs around me
My boyfriend whispering sweet nothings as he tightened my chains
My anxiety binding my feet
My depression locking each door
My PTSD pouring the now rusted metal over it all
Everything sealing me in as I sat there
I just sat there
Like the fireflies, I’d catch as a kid
I’d flown right into my trap
And now I was here forever
But my captors didn’t cut me air holes
No holes poked in my lid
I was here to suffocate and starve
And die
That’s what it felt like
Why else would I be so enclosed
If not to spend the rest of my life in here
At first, I did fight
At first, I did shovel chunks of stone out of the wall
With my bare hands
Tearing myself apart
With my bare hands
At first, I screamed and cried
My lungs turning to dust and my voice to claw marks
My eyes melting away
But eventually
I accepted my walls
My cozy little room
The ending would eventually give me
But my ending never came
And huddled on a futon in a musty basement
The metal started to chip
Spilling out tangled life plots to my therapist
The bars started to crack
Hugging my knees to my chest in a sterile building
My prison started to fall apart around me
Falling down
Falling away
With every word and skill and breath and moment
I am not free
My mind still holds me
In rusted and chipped walls
With crumbling finishes
At least now
I’ve started to find my way out
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