6:00 AM **

My eyes flutter awake, a splintering tempest guarding any and all understanding of hour.

Yesterday was a haze, hours crawling away, switched with time spent lost in a vortex of dreams and aspirations beyond

where I am.

Greased, brittle strands of hair coat my head’s divot on a pillow.

Slimed teeth, the only tangible punishment from my divulgence into rest

and abandonment of my expectations.

Was I born happy, or has it always been like this?

12:00 PM **

A sigh escapes from behind my teeth,

Years of patience and good manners tie childhood down before it escapes wailing.

White walls have become my home, getting lost in the blank canvas,

My life.

Gnarled nails are shields to the hardened skin peeling from the rub of arid wood.

What must it be like?

To give air its freedom back.

6:00 PM **

A silhouette coats the walls, its body fire.

Swirling and crackling, restless.

Its body aches, the only one of its many appendages free of that cathartic snap of bones,

Its eyes searing.

A whistling masks its voice.

Rags paint the ground beneath itself, growing into a separate disease.

Screams and shouts echo, dazing it, left without reason for lull.

Did you enjoy

Putting me through this?

12:00 AM **

It stares up, out into  the sable world it was born in, 

probing for a home to return to after it fails.

Hair drapes its shoulders now, obscuring sight, leaving it blind

to morning.

Its eyes shut, slugged by the day’s labor.

But it knows, three hours more and its job

will be done.