Author's Note: This is a piece I did based on a painting I saw at the Milwaukee Art Museum. For some reason, this painting gave me a lot to write about, so I chose it. At first I wanted to make it a poem, but it didn't feel right, so it's just kind of a journal entry-ish free form piece. I hope you enjoy it! Also, there is a picture of the painting below the piece.
My fingers wrap around the cold steel bars, one by one.
I've lost all of the reasons to grab onto that metal monster--
It encases
traps
suffocates.
I've lost all reason, but one.
I don’t hold on to beg for forgiveness, or to try to break out, I hold on to feel something. The smooth cold nature does not forgive, does not accept, it bites back; it shocks me enough to make me feel again, feel what I've done, what this place has done to me. It is my own kind of drug, the simple feeling of something like that is enough to get me by.
Too soon though, the bars become one with my hands, intertwined so much that it makes me sick. I damage everything around me, like a parasite growing stronger by the minute, but instead...
I grow weaker.
I reach through, grabbing for the light I see in the distance, the light that started out so bright, but now fades every time I glance back. I don't usually dare too look, for fear that it might fade completely, and that is the only thing I have left, but I am too far gone to care, for nothing can get worse, so I give in, grab for it with all my might, preparing for what happens next.
I reach through, grabbing for the light I see in the distance, the light that started out so bright, but now fades every time I glance back. I don't usually dare too look, for fear that it might fade completely, and that is the only thing I have left, but I am too far gone to care, for nothing can get worse, so I give in, grab for it with all my might, preparing for what happens next.
I keep reaching, only to have it fade faster than I could have ever imagined, dark purple the color of the fading sunset, into green as dark as the blacks of my eyes. They are the most beautiful colors in the rainbow, turning foul as they match the color of the dirty space around me, turning into memory as the light disappears forever.
I was wrong, I was not too far gone, I was at a crossroads, and I took the wrong route.
I am worse than too far gone now, I am forever erased in the minds of all who knew me, all who cared. I stumble back, and slide down the wall in a dark corner of my cell, prepared to spend the rest of my days here--
No.
Prepared to leave my body now, and have the empty shell that was once me remain, to gather dust, to rot for eternity, for no one will fine me.
No one wants to.
