don't touch me, for i might crack
don't hit me, for i might break
don't yell at me, for i will shatter

these glass walls hold my porcelain soul,
but cannot protect me from the world
the pain, the love, the hurt—

paint my face the way it should be
a smile and bright red cheeks
i am yours to design

The silence is deafening.
How many days has it been?

I can almost make out the faint calls,
Of someone in the distance.

But just as quickly as they appear,
They vanish without a trace.

So, I sit against the wall,
Hugging my knees to my chest.

Scratches on the rough concrete behind me
Marking the depth of my agony

How long will I rot in this cage,
Before someone notices that I am missing?

Despair clouds my mind
As I desperately search for escape I fear I will
Never find.
Can't you see I'm drowning in the
Emptiness of reality?

Inside my mind, I am free and there is
Not a cage in the world that can hold me.

Though, as hard as I try, I cannot seem to figure out
How to stay there
Eternally.

Gracefully, I leap and spin, a bird flying in the dark as
I mourn for the place I belong, home, that I
Long for every second, and every
Day. I wonder if I can survive this long without it. At the
End of the day I ask myself "Who am I?", and
Dread the answer that haunts my mind like a phantom.

Crimson stains spread through my soul as I fall into the
Abyss of madness.
Gasping for breath as I wake up to another day of
Endlessly dancing in my gilded cage.

Beneath the moon's cold, silver eye,
She walks alone where shadows lie.
A girl with chaos in her veins,
Addictions anchoring her chains.

The beggar sat with cards in hand,
A gypsy wind, a whispering sand.
"The Tower falls," the old man said,
"A truth will strike, you'll wish you fled."

Reality, like glass, now shatters,
Her consciousness—no longer scattered.
A daggered truth, it tears, it rends,
As darkness gathers, old wounds mend.

She wears her past like ghostly shrouds,
A shadow trailing, black and proud.
Her demons leer with burning flame,
Eyes of guilt—they know her name.

She sees herself through mirrors cursed,
A jagged soul, her sins rehearsed.
Her reflection screams, a silent dirge,
And madness sings—a wretched urge.

She stumbles through a twisted maze,
Insanity in walls ablaze.
A labyrinth where screams rebound,
And all the exits can’t be found.

The sage’s smoke—an earthly balm,
Cannot restore her spirit’s calm.
For though she begs the world to save,
The map she needs is hers to pave.

No hands but hers can cut the thread,
No voice but hers can wake the dead.
Though black fire demons haunt her way,
Her will alone can break their sway.

So in the dark, she makes a vow,
Though frail, though lost—she’ll rise somehow.
The Tower fell, but she remains,
A storm, reborn from fractured chains.

We’ve made this place of leaving—
a vault for the untended.
Emotions stack like unlabeled jars,
their contents thick with time,
sediments of grief,
crystals of joy unsavored.

Are we the living,
or the ones who forgot
to move their hands
in the rhythm of the world?
The air smells of waiting,
stale, heavy with pause.
We circle the same questions,
polishing them into mirrors
where our faces blur.

Inside us,
an atlas torn apart:
coastlines of longing,
islands of silence,
rivers carving paths we never took.
Each scar a road.
Each sigh a compass.
Yet the map to home
eludes us still.

We walk the perimeter of ourselves,
searching for the key we swallowed.
The treasures we hoard
are dust without light,
their worth unseen,
their meanings locked
in a language we once spoke
but let slip away.

What is this place?
A limbo where our shadows
mourn their bodies.
Here, even death hesitates,
unsure if it belongs.
And we, the keepers,
stand guard over
what we cannot name—
prisoners and sentinels both,
afraid to leave,
afraid to stay.

I am trapped,
Trapped in a delusion,
A mirage of what once was,
Where shadows dance in the corners,
And echoes of laughter fade into silence.

There is no one;
I am left alone,
A solitary figure in a landscape of memories,
The nights look haunted,
Cloaked in a shroud of darkness,
Whispering secrets of the unseen.

Day whispers a cry,
A cry of a dead man within my heart,
A heartbeat that falters,
Lost in the labyrinth of my thoughts,
I am a prisoner,
Who has done no crime,
Yet here I languish,
Bound by invisible chains.

I want to move,
But can’t feel my feet,
I want to talk,
But silence wraps around me,
I want to cry,
But has no reason
I want to laugh,
Laugh louder again!
Again no reason.

I am a ghost lost in my stories,
Where I am dead,
Yet still feel the pain,
The pain of my dreams,
And the people I left behind.

I want to return,
Return back to them,
But I’ve lost the way that takes me to them,
The path obscured by the fog of regret,
I am stuck,
Stuck in this dream,
A wisp of a thought,
A fleeting shadow.

I want someone to wake me up,
To pull me from this slumber,
I want to get out of the character,
Shed this skin that no longer fits,
I want to get out of the cell
Which has no wall,
A prison of my own making,
Where freedom is a whisper,
And hope flickers like a dying flame.

My chest is a drum, relentless and wild,
A furious rhythm, untamed, unstyled,
Each beat pounds harder, faster, loud,
Trapped in this storm, beneath its shroud.

I search for the cause, but answers evade,
Is it the stress from the choices I’ve made?
The work that piles, the dreams deferred,
Or unspoken fears, those thoughts unheard?

Affairs of the heart tug me both ways,
Promises tangled in shadowed haze,
Is it love that quickens this torrid pace,
Or fear of losing a fleeting embrace?

The future looms, uncertain, unclear,
Its whispers feed my quietest fears,
Am I walking a path that’s truly my own,
Or chasing shadows, endlessly thrown?

The coffee surges, a bitter ally,
Fuel for the sleepless nights gone awry,
Yet every sip brings a sharper sting,
Winding the gears, tightening the spring.

And then there are voices, harsh and unkind,
The toxic echoes that clutter my mind,
Their pressure a weight I can’t displace,
Adding to this frantic race.

I clutch my chest, will it to slow,
But the current runs deeper than I can know,
No breath can calm this raging tide,
No place to run, nowhere to hide.

Yet still, I seek the silence within,
A flicker of peace, where healing begins,
Though the source eludes, the fight is mine,
To reclaim this heart, to steady its time.

One breath, one moment, one step away,
From the tempest that grips me, this disarray,
I’ll find the stillness, I’ll break this chain,
And bring my heart back home again.