sealed shut by you
decades ago,
my eyes stubbornly refuse to open
as sunlight pierces my realm.
release me,
i whisper.
one hundred years i’ve been
here,
surrounded by a stench more massive
than the entrails of a decaying blue whale.
parched lips drop blood
onto a slimy green floor.
release me,
i beg.
atrophied and blind,
i stretch broken hands outward
toward the warmth,
yearning to be loved
as a newborn is by her mother.
your laughter echoes to and fro,
bouncing off the walls of my
hidden prison.
release me,
i plead.
you giggle,
lapping at my sanity
as a kitten laps at milk in a warm kitchen.
the ocean crashes onto a sandy shore,
stealing grains of my mind
with each retraction,
replacing them with your own.
forcing me to accept a new reality as you
crush me down further and further,
denying me heaven.
so i sit.
cling to the slimy walls of my odoriferous cell
as a barnacle clings to a ship afloat upon an unforgiving sea.
lost, forever, yet drifting
doggedly toward hope.