Window in My Cell

I stay up past the numbers of the clock avoiding eye contact with the split shadows on my walls We’re all so lonely, caged within this fleshy cell Sure, we could talk to each other, but strangers have such shallow conversations and we’re all still sane enough to be picky (or so I like to think) ----------------------- They’ve installed a window in our room the shadows shrink away from it but I press my face so hard against the glass that I can almost feel the wind They called it a gift and for awhile it was but now all I do is scrape at the window until the glass is smeared with blood There are people walking below our window naive smiles and shrill voices that our ears drink in, and oh, I want it all! I’m so close! Every damn day, I get so close! I know that they did this on purpose! They isolated me, left me to my own devices in a dark pit, then they let a little light in- they want my envy and destitution to cripple me so that I might go quietly! I’ve motioned to the shadows, tried to show them what we’ve been denied, but they won’t come out from under their beds. ------------------------ I traced my finger along the window’s curve this morning and found a crack in the glass I wept like as a mother would at her only child’s wedding, and the shadows wept too, but I don’t think that we wept for the same reason because their mouths didn’t stretch up and out like mine I don’t know what caused our window to crack- maybe a bird with poor sight, maybe a young boy who likes to throw stones- not that it really matters Tonight! Tonight I’m going to break off a piece of my bed frame and swing at the crack until it spreads like oil over the gulf! Then the wind on my face won’t be so sad, it’ll be genuine and crisp and clean I’ll launch myself through the newly shattered window and maybe I’ll land on the pillow grass and brush myself off like I’ve been out all along, or maybe I’ll cut myself on the shards and plummet head first towards the deceiving ground I’ll be an egg that fell through a gap in the nest Is it worth the risk?