The walls are bare
and impossible to break down.
No way in.
and no simple way out.
The windows are boarded shut,
with splintering wood.
The shredded shades are drawn,
to **** any possible hope
of even a sliver
of light.
A single bulb hangs from the ceiling,
long since burnt out.
The hard concrete floor
is cold beneath her bare feet.

A wooden chair
stands in the center of the room,
but she prefers to sit on the floor.
Thinking that maybe,
hopefully
if she curls up enough
she’ll no longer be there.
Then, she can simply vanish into thin air.
Is it bad that she thinks of such a thing?
Yes it is
she’s just thirteen.

They wonder why she feels this way,
her life is perfectly lined up
with every detail planned out
and every possible event accounted for.
The perfect life she is expected to live.
She will do well in school,
get A’s in all her classes,
get into a private high school.
Then she’ll go on to an Ivy league college.
How can she not be happy with her life?
Doesn’t it sound perfectly perfect?
What more could she want?

Maybe she just wants to be heard
but no one will listen
because all they can think is
what more could she want
than this life?
Maybe she wants to go to high school with her friends.
Maybe she wanted to go to that party yesterday,
but couldn’t because she was studying
because if she gets below a perfect score on the test
she won’t be the best
and that strays off the path of this life laid out for her.
Oh no no no now we can’t have that.

So maybe it would be easier to just sit in a room
with baren walls, closed windows, and concrete floors
where no one can get in.
A room that was never there until
she came along.
A room she built with her own two hands,
piece by piece,
bit by bit,
until she put the last nail in the last window,
making it impossible to get in,
but not impossible to get out.

She could just leave.
She could kick down the door.
She could unnail the boards.
She could be free.
She could escape.
She could finally burn down
this House of Hate.

But out there,
there are people,
there are people with expectations that want things done
the same people who are forcing her to be number one.
But she doesn’t want to be number one all the time.
She just wants to have fun,
to be free, to have a say
in how her life is layed out
because you think it’s a neat straight line
but she would prefer
it to be a scribble all over the page.

She just wants to have a say.
But no one will listen to her voice,
it is overpowered by too many people
saying no,
too many people
saying this is what you do.
But her voice is never heard,
so why keep wasting her breath?

Her room is never found,
and no knocking ever comes.
No one ever starts banging on the door.
No one screams at her to let them in.
No one comes to save her.
And she’s gotten used to life being this way.
So instead of wasting her tears,
on “friends” who don’t seem to care,
she just sits in this room
staring at the wall
hoping
wishing
praying
that there was
none of her
at all.