A portrait of captivity:

Freedom with terms and conditions,
Strings attached.
Poison from a silver spoon.
It is a diamond-studded collar and gilded leash.
A decorative noose,
hanging by a golden thread.

It is a cage,
walls and mirrors
in place of iron bars.
Locked doors and missing keys.
Dead ends.
This is what it is to be cornered.

This is what it looks like to be trapped:
Always moving forward,
and two steps back.
Knowing that the world turns
in circles.
Never really getting ahead,
only around a bend.

It is to stand at a podium
voiceless,
clawing at your throat,
fixating over bits of fractured sentences.
Too many asterisks,
never enough periods.
Scrambling after stray letters
and broken thoughts.
Never complete.

What is worse:
To be unheard
or to be misunderstood?
Perhaps,
it is to be ignored.
Loud does not mean powerful.
If anything,
the more I scream,
the more powerless I become.

I have been cut so many times,
Again.
Again.
Again.
that now when I bleed,
I am amazed at how it is
I can still possibly feel this sensation.
This pain.
This searing numbness.

I am hollow,
and this restlessness torments me.

It is weeping with dry eyes.
Drowning with your lungs full
so that every breath you inhale
tastes like fire.

It is a starless sky,
infinite blackness as far as the eye can see.
Beautiful,
but still Hell.

A spotless, immaculate silence -
the kind you could not fill
even if you tried.

But most of all,
it is a carpet heart.
Patchy and well-worn in some places,
trampled underfoot too many times.
But tread lightly, love.
Watch your step.

It is shifting.