The music at the party is pumping.
All the teenagers are     jumping.
But I only hear  my  heart  thumping.
Alone   on the sofa and   slumping.
Stewing in   solitude,   a dumpling.
Starting to   disintegrate,   crumbling.
I feel a disturbance,   a rumbling.
I reach for my phone, I'm   fumbling,
For a text, a call,        something,
Anything to enhance   the    numbing.
I rise from my perch,  stumbling  .
I  collidewithsomepeople, they're grumbling.
Now I'm    falling  out  the  door,   tumbling.

People are laughing, tutting frowning.
They see me on the ground, but I'm
                                                             ­   drowning.

Fire and pain and sorrow behind me,
A soul in my knapsack they didn't want me to have.
   I hear shouts from behind the wall I've broken,
     I can't let them get me again.
      A light, a song, a passion for me
        Lying just beyond the boundary.
      They shoot me down and I bleed tears,
     But I emerge, my loot intact.
   But I emerge, body busted and broken.
But I emerge.

I sing to my captor through the bars,
But all he does is mock me, mimic my song,
Trapped, ensnared, fortified.
I have not yet learned to fly
But I have not yet yearned to die:
There is still time to hope, to dream, to fail.
Time has allowed me to realise many a thing,
Like the key that I clasp and the lock that it fits
Just. Out. Of. Reach.
Time has allowed me to reflect,
Like the mirror that shows me my captor,
Previously a window, now a truth.
Just. Out. Of. Time.