I claw at the walls of my own making,
a tomb I crafted with fingers too eager
to shape shadows into shelter.
These chains, thick with the rust of regret,
rattle like old ghosts, familiar
and haunting.
They coil around my ribs,
squeeze the breath from my chest,
the links tattooed with whispers:
not enough, not enough, never enough.
My fingers are bloodied from searching,
digging through darkness for a key
I thought to never lose.
The air is thick with the smell of fear and iron.
I taste the cold metal of my own mistakes
on my tongue;
salt and copper,
bitterness that bites back.
I press my palms to my chest,
feel the frantic rhythm of a heart
pounding against its cage,
a bird desperate to break free,
feathers matted, wings torn,
but it still beats.
And there, in the midst of me,
I find it:
a flicker of gold, a sliver of light
in a very dark place.
A key, small and jagged, forged
from the shards of every time
I chose to breathe
instead of breaking.
I raise it to the chains,
feel them tremble, hear them scream
as they melt away, link by link,
until I stand in the raw air,
exposed but alive,
hands empty but whole,
new skin stretching over old wounds
that will someday finally heal.
