As the walls come closer together,

the imprisonment painfully narrow,

it becomes hard to breath...

So I close my eyes, to pretend, to imagine-

that there are no walls, there is no cage, just a limitless space for me to drift in...

I try to fool myself with this belief,

within it find freedom and seek relief...

but in truth it is only my eyes that are resting...

My breath remains shortened and trapped in the knowing,

that once I open my eyes, there wil be nothing for me to see.

It comes over you like the touch of a light summer breeze gently swifting through your hair. It comes as a surprise, though wastes no time to remind you that it has never really left. It brings a dull kind of pain, with discrepant sharpness, carrying a sense of helplessness if not despair, though hardly leaving you passive... rather, uneasy and restless, as the maddening question sets in:

"What if...?"

What if its presence is eternal, like a shadow- always there, even when out of sight?

Like a transparent stone, perhaps invisible to the eye, but with a heaviness that persistently burdens and cannot be denied.

Or an image dark and shapeless, leaving you numb yet grasping for air at the same time, as it reminds you:

You cannot cut it off like a rotten piece of fruit, discard it, or close the door to its face, for it does not ask for permission to enter- at times it plays the game of shadows, but it is ceaselessly present.

If I cannot love anymore, what is there left to give me a sense of existence?

Is it not love and love only that makes us humans human?

Is not all good and all bad a result of surpressed or carried-out love?

Is not the only image worthy of reflection that of a lover, a lover in the purest sense of the word?

So please: take this mirror away from me, I can't stand looking at a ghost;

a ghost that is being trusted with such valuable gifts of life, but no beating heart to offer them a home.