Sometimes I wonder.

Was it a gradual thing?

Or did she wake up one day

Suddenly suffocated by the ring.

When did she realize?

 That her life wouldn’t be

What she dreamed about under the night skies.

When did getting out become the only solution?

Only to fall into a real trap

A cage.

Inhabited by an animal

A creature

That would bring her no resolution.

When did she realize that she was sinking?

Drifting away from everyone and everything,

Regrets and what-ifs clouding her thinking.

Was it at seventeen?

With child,

But no mother of her own on whom to lean

Frightened by the reality,

So much different from her dream.

Scared and without knowing where to go or what to do,

She never grew.