Moving From You To We; Trapped

We live in a pain dwelling, a place where climbing out you’re sure to cut your hands, little cuts that burn and sting their way towards healing for days. Scars can be a nice reminder that your body is still existing, there’s that positive outlook we’ve been trying for. My mind is so deep into lockdown I’m lucky to form simple sentences, I can barely form the words to tell you we need to get some air. We have to go outside and breathe and walk and feel air and breeze and breathe it all. We are the living oxymoron, the prisoner and warden in one, our minds. Wrestling to control the unsalvageable halls from which we can never escape, you can’t escape yourself. At least we can break outta this shit hole, and let’s, we do, we pierce the encasings and sneak out towards the sea.

For us, there’s no such thing as sleep, it’s a kind of freedom we can’t afford. Because as we lay to slumber they feel us relaxing, and they reach out with their spindly claws, long unhappy vine fingers, interloping and meandering, sneaking stealth of spite, one prick and you’re lost, sound all alarms, we will not be caught unawares this night. So we walk, we may as well walk, we may as well be nearby the opulence of the sea, the only divinity and splendor we know.

Our defenses cannot be fortified, our walls left unmeasured due to exhaustion, a warden without sleep can’t order barbed wire. You can’t keep them in, you can’t let yourself out, you can’t escape yourself. We walk aimlessly, and you throw stones, maybe your bad thoughts will fly away and drown with the rock in the sea (thankless secret-keeper).

We may as well be underwater with that stone you threw, we can’t get to fresh air from the deep end. We need perspective, clarity, to be genuine- it was a good plan, to be genuine and honest, but how do we stop for a moment, how do we breathe? Staring at the sea we know what to do but we still cannot do it. We have no country, no homeland, no home, we don’t even know where we are it’s absurd, you can’t go home again I read that in a story and someone miles ago said lost generation I hear it through a cloud and is that us, because we are lost. It’s not coping, it’s not thinking, and you do the most insane things it just doesn’t make any sense, me too, I know, we do the most insane things, we can’t escape ourselves and I don’t understand, I don’t know why you don’t just give it a break and stop inviting people in.

This house is too dark, this ocean is too deep. Even if you let the right one in, they can’t let us out.

Allison Fabian is a writer of impressionistic fiction and poetry, and serves as Editor-in-Chief at The Insomniac Propagandist, an art and literary magazine for the strange at heart. She is an avid supporter of intersectional feminism, which she promotes through writing, volunteering, and the occasional flash walk, most recently at Ignite Chicago. Allison’s favorite things are creating much needed words, alliteration, collective nouns, and dogs.