This is the way
Hope falters
Ebbing like a dying flame

This is the way
Innocence is lost
With whispers
And secrets

This is the way
A girl loses her mind
In silence

This is the way
Pain exists
In the shadows
Of the soul

This is the way
A life can end
An accumulation of sorrow
And the cage closing in

Now
I have had enough
Of living beneath the debris
In the low shadows
I am sick
Of living small and hidden
In the cupboards of life
Sick of going through the hallways
Unseen, unoticed
I no longer want to be invisible
I want to emerge
From behind the veil,
Push the curtains aside
I am claiming the crown
I want sunlight and nightfall
To belong to me
I want the beams to bend at my fingertips
I want the wind to submit to me
I want to be immortal
I want to be the captain
But the problem is,
I am less and less
And nothing
Yet still aching for something
Still reaching for what I can't obtain

I want to be fluid, I want to be smooth
With the ability to soothe
Be like the waters
With seashell daughters
Of streams and brooks and rain
Always tender, always humble, never vain
Yet still ruling with sovereign reign
Nothing should ever be able to stop me
Nothing can stop the ocean or the sea
Not even time
I want to be huge, I want to be sublime
Never hurt, never chagrined
I want to have no fear of the wind
And even less of the heat or the cold
I want to shimmer with gold
When the sun sets
Away from mortal things like hate or regrets
I want to learn to sing like water
Without ever wearying, tiring,
Wheezing or expiring
I want to be the water
When it hums to the night
Chants to the stars bright
Stroking the sand
I want to be water never bland
I want to be the water that glorifies
Which runs, which plays, purifies
Which is sweet and pure, untainted, unattainable
I want to be the water mysterious and unexplainable
I want to be the water when it unfolds
When it holds
The seaweed with maiden hands
I want to be the water when it expands
Dances, sways, flows,
Diverted from the abyss

I’m trying to grip the hands of the nearest shadows
I’m trying to see the lines of the cage that imprisons me
The dim landscapes that surround me
I’m trying to hear the thing in my chest
Burning day and night
I’m trying to smell the smoke
That envelopes me
But it's all out of reach
Undefinable, unplaceable
What are my roots, what are my boundaries
My goals, my aims, my dreams
I cannot quite grasp
Who I am and what I'm in

My eyes burn with the glare
Of too many long nights’ vigils
Watching the winged insomnia fluttering about
From one thought
To the other
Every stream of consciousness
Every chain of thought
Loosened and undone
By Night’s hungry hands