Insanity's Angel

She presses her palms to the pure white wall

lost in a dream that cannot be seen by mortal man,

reaching to the face of the tall, silent angel towering

above her small, meek frame fragile to the wind.

Her lips move in unheard murmur, a silent prayer

filled with the deepest secrets of the universe,

asking to see, asking to feel, asking to be free,

but the angel doesn't move, doesn't say, doesn't breathe.

She traces her finger across the corners of the room

bewitched by the hope lingering in her heart

that one day she'd discover the truth of her purpose;

why she lives instead of her long lost love.

The voices inside her head whisper sharply

and so she kneels on the charcoal floor closing her eyes,

searching for the meaning of what yesterday held,

what tomorrow brings, what today didn't happen.

She wiggles her toes in a breeze that doesn't blow,

stroking her hair in lonely comfort she accepts,

calling the angel to touch her bruises and scrapes-

to heal what time can never erase.

Pulling her legs tightly to her chest, she rocks quietly

back and forth in memory of a cradle long ago,

forever a witness to short affection and a broken promise

that the arms she was born into would never let go.

Laughter, smiles, photographs inside her mind,

a song of sweet sadness replaying without end

as she recalls the days wasted, the happiness that once was,

part of something other people believe in too.

The temperature grows colder, but there are no windows,

just a bantam light bulb above twisted in the ceiling

to constantly remind her she cannot see the sun-

left to shiver and tremble in unnatural light.

Alas, she pleads once more to be unchained,

for sanity to return and other ways she'd meet old age,

to be released from the torment of talking to her thoughts

and the shadow that ceases to answer at all.

Nobody hears and she screams aloud,

and white-dressed figures rush like leaves in a storm

to pin her body to the familiar concrete ground

she so despises and yet it's what she must know as home.

A prick to her flesh, a surge of sedation in her blood,

again and again- no more she dreams.

Banish the pain, banish the loneliness, the nightmares,

and give a light of guidance to joy.

A numbness dwells in her hands and she groans,

left behind over and over to suffer this torture,

and those busy faces she'd seen times before

desert her to the haunting of complete emptiness.

And so she lies in an unforgiving stillness,

noiseless tears spilling in anguish across her cheeks,

a grief so deep- how the angel takes pity,

kissing her forehead softly as the lights go out.