Break Out Cry

Don't you hear it?

My horns crack as I hit my head against the glass

Over and over and over again.

The orderlies shout, "Monster!"

Through the reinforced pane.

They stare at a pitch-black head,

No visible features to trace.

Just a void where a smile should be,

Staring back from this sterile place.

A patchwork shadow in the fluorescent light:

My pink left arm claws at the seams,

My green right arm smashes the frame.

A yellow torso holding in the strain.

Balanced on a white left leg,

Driven by a grey right one.

They think this straightjacket holds a man,

But the human parts are long gone.

I used to have a name they called me by,

Before the cold steel and the blinding white light.

They changed my cells,

they rewrote my frame,

And washed my real reflection right out of sight.

I remember a childhood,

a warmth in my chest,

Before I was traded for science and greed.

They made me a phantom,

then locked me away,

Forgetting the human beneath what they made.

My shadow stretches, bending rules of the dark,

As I skitter and glide up the drywall.

No human movement could ripple this way— A skinwalker trapped in a

hospital. I slither, I scramble,

defying the ground, Shifting my shape like a ghost in the room.

My limbs flow like illusions,

too fluid, too fast,

Filling the hallway with silence and gloom.

Behind the mask of this changing form,

I only wanted a place to belong.

To wear a face that the world wouldn't fear,

To find a home where I finally fit in.

But they see a creature,

they see a threat,

Locked in the dark where the lonely reside.

I patched these colors to try and match you,

But I'm just an echo with nowhere to hide.

The alarms are flashing brightly,

The sirens start to wail.

They built these walls for madness,

But they didn't build a cage for this scale.

One last strike, the glass begins to spider,

The colors blur into the night.

They called me a patient,

they called me a freak,

But they're about to call me flight.