My Prison

My mind has become its own prison

Tally marks carved to count the days

Bars on my eyelids to keep me locked

Corners filled with cobwebs and dust

The center scratched and worn

From my attempts to tunnel out

But the walls can’t be torn

Not with a sledgehammer or a drill

No matter how many times my head slams against drywall

The walls won’t budge

Trust me I’ve tried

I remember when my cage was built

My mother smiling at me as she set concrete slabs around me

My boyfriend whispering sweet nothings as he tightened my chains

My anxiety binding my feet

My depression locking each door

My PTSD pouring the now rusted metal over it all

Everything sealing me in as I sat there

I just sat there

Like the fireflies, I’d catch as a kid

I’d flown right into my trap

And now I was here forever

But my captors didn’t cut me air holes

No holes poked in my lid

I was here to suffocate and starve

And die

That’s what it felt like

Why else would I be so enclosed

If not to spend the rest of my life in here

At first, I did fight

At first, I did shovel chunks of stone out of the wall

With my bare hands

Tearing myself apart

With my bare hands

At first, I screamed and cried

My lungs turning to dust and my voice to claw marks

My eyes melting away

But eventually

I accepted my walls

My cozy little room

The ending would eventually give me

But my ending never came

And huddled on a futon in a musty basement

The metal started to chip

Spilling out tangled life plots to my therapist

The bars started to crack

Hugging my knees to my chest in a sterile building

My prison started to fall apart around me

Falling down

Falling away

With every word and skill and breath and moment

I am not free

My mind still holds me

In rusted and chipped walls

With crumbling finishes

At least now 

I’ve started to find my way out