I sit captive in this prison

The walls the dead slate of gray

Nothing here to see

Just the guttural howling of the wind

It crawls under my skin, I can’t think

It’s just me and my hardened soul

 

Or should I say what’s left of my soul

By the personal sins I’ve committed; this prison

Befits a sorry woman like me, a naive woman who thinks

That I may see colour again one day and that the gray

Stark and alien as the eerie wind

Will dissolve into a distant phantom that I cannot see

 

But I’m really floating on distant seas

Somehow contained my the perimeters of my consciousness

I even smell fragrant flowers on the breeze

Then slammed unceremoniously back to captivity

I lose brilliant blue to the clouding of gray

I wish I’d lose my mind so I wouldn’t have my thoughts

 

But I don’t really wish that, my thoughts

Are all I have, maybe instead I’d wish to see

Not another speck of gray!

I am alone, I am the sole

Survivor of this jail

My worries, fears, and anxieties carried on the wind

 

But I believe that there is hope, a whispering breeze

That could drown the shrieking of my racing thoughts

I can flee this cell

I can flee what I wish I did not have to see

I can flee the darker corners of my soul

Until I lift myself up from the dismal, assaulting gray

I can’t keep merely existing in the gray

 

I deserve every colour of life on blessed winds

I alone will shed light onto the shadows of my soul

I can quiet the whimpering of my anxious thoughts

And I can escape, there’s a world I need to see

After all, I’m the one who built this prison

 

By Amanda Gibb