Occasionally I inquire what it'd be like to be
A mind as shallow as those around me

They never think of anything unusual
Nothing that they haven't heard before
Nothing they aren't told to, nothing crucial
They never search for keys to unopened doors

How boring it must be to live in such a brain
Where imagination simply doesn't exist
Where all that they dream up is purely plain
And nothing ever has an unexpected twist

They don't ask questions that don't have answers
They can't stand stillness and never stop to ponder
All that they speak is meaningless banter
They refuse to open their minds to galaxies of wonder

But every once in a while I get curious
Until I'm quickly reminded of their invariance

Their freedom to tell their depths is now confined to a week.
But despite the propaganda, they are still afraid to speak.
On the outside, they are perceived as nothing but freaks.
On the inside, their lives are catastrophic, yet also bleak.

From their mountains of anxiety to their valleys of depression,
Nobody wants to listen to their pleading expressions.
They're forced to hold down their feelings with constant suppression.
So desperate to become invisible, it becomes an obsession.

As if their sickness was not as legitimate as one of the physical kind
Just because it plagues their body on the inside of their mind.
Behind their daily masks, they are continuously confined,
And the rest of their lives will be wrapped in a box and predefined.

They often wish things were how they saw them: nothing being real.
They use third person pronouns to describe how they feel
Because, whether they like it or not, they aren't made of steel,
But continue to futilely dance around the solar system's wheel.

It was late in the spring,
And the flowers had bloomed.
But though the birds did sing,
One thought she'd be doomed.

Afraid of what laid beyond her walls,
She kept closed in a bud, so nobody knew
Of her catastrophic inner-world brawls
Or why her stem and petals never grew.

What if they think I'm too pretty,
And I quickly get picked?
What if I'm planted in a big city,
And my petals are torn up and pricked?

And after so long of nothing but questions,
She'd had enough of that chatty buttercup.
So she took the other flowers' suggestions,
And ever so slowly, she began to open up.

But just as her petals reached for the sky,
A cold wind made her shudder. An early frost
Had snuck into autumn. Yes, autumn, I cry!
And immediately, she became very crossed.

Why did you tell me that I'd see the sun,
And that it would be warm and colorful?
Where did all this cold white powder come from,
And why is the wind so painfully powerful?

But as she panicked she looked around
To find that no other flowers were to be seen.
And with none of them to be found
She wasn't sure what she thought of this scene.

She got angry and decided they were all closed.
Her perception of the outside had been an illusion.
She knew now that she loathed being exposed
And came to her conclusion:

*I will go back to my hiding place,
And never again shall I come back,
Because I so much long to be encased,
Away from this painful and viscous attack.