I stay up past the numbers of the clock avoiding eye contact with the split shadows on my walls
We’re all so lonely, caged within this fleshy cell
Sure, we could talk to each other,
but strangers have such shallow conversations
and we’re all still sane enough to be picky
(or so I like to think)

-----------------------

They’ve installed a window in our room
the shadows shrink away from it
but I press my face so hard against the glass that I can almost feel the wind
They called it a gift
and for awhile it was
but now all I do is scrape at the window until the glass is smeared with blood

There are people walking below our window
naive smiles and shrill voices that our ears drink in,
and oh, I want it all!
I’m so close! Every damn day, I get so close!
I know that they did this on purpose!
They isolated me,
left me to my own devices in a dark pit,
then they let a little light in-
they want my envy and destitution to cripple me so that I might go quietly!
I’ve motioned to the shadows, tried to show them what we’ve been denied,
but they won’t come out from under their beds.

------------------------

I traced my finger along the window’s curve this morning and found a crack in the glass
I wept like as a mother would at her only child’s wedding,
and the shadows wept too,
but I don’t think that we wept for the same reason
because their mouths didn’t stretch up and out like mine
I don’t know what caused our window to crack-
maybe a bird with poor sight, maybe a young boy who likes to throw stones-
not that it really matters

Tonight!
Tonight I’m going to break off a piece of my bed frame
and swing at the crack until it spreads like oil over the gulf!
Then the wind on my face won’t be so sad,
it’ll be genuine
and crisp
and clean
I’ll launch myself through the newly shattered window
and maybe I’ll land on the pillow grass and brush myself off
like I’ve been out all along,
or maybe I’ll cut myself on the shards and plummet head first towards the deceiving ground
I’ll be an egg that fell through a gap in the nest
Is it worth the risk?