I want to please you. I want to be ‘normal.’ I want to come out of my shell and fit in. I want you to see me in all my glory and love me in my completion. I want to be all you ever wanted and needed.

I hear, from deep within myself.

I want to dance like no one is watching. Believe no one is watching, and spin and spin without a care in the world. I want to be free. Open to all without fear of over-exposure.

I cry, from deep within myself.

Why is it that my existence seems so different and locked up? A prisoner without a key? Why must I continue to pace, one corner to the next, chiseling away at invisible barriers?

I pound, from deep within myself.

I am tired of waking up to me. This sameness unaltered in every way—still tired. Still scared. Still this child who was dropped down into a misty nowhere.

I plead, from deep within myself.

I hate it here, inside this me. When the walls close in, and the voices of unreason come, the mind cycling through unwanted thoughts, over and over, some washing machine gone haywire, off-balance, loud, uncomfortable rocking.

I bang, from deep within myself.

I should know better by now, the world tells me so. The world dictates my wellness. How to be. What to say. Where to go. Whom to turn to. What to run away from. Bombarding me with their fragmented answers they hold as truths.

I watch, from deep within myself.

Back and forth the dreams go. One day full. The next moment empty. Unbridled towering emotions surging through me. An ocean, a river—the continual rapids of intake. Equilibrium broken. Eternally walking on the high wire above the crashing falls.

I breathe, from deep within myself.

Where am I today? Where did I go? I feel the eyes of judgment. Daunting glares they are. Again? Again? Again? Can she not learn? Can she not break her pattern? Hasn’t she had enough of this self she proclaims?

I wither, from deep within myself.

Tethered to the billion ideas lingering. A graveyard alive of circumstantial evidence. Dug up. Exposed to the rotted bone. And still empty solutions. A ghost alive, drifting away, as the shell collapses beneath the weight of the world.

I separate, from deep within myself.

Hold me, I proclaim. Touch me. I shout out. Not wanting to be moved in a human way. Not wanting the flesh. But what is beyond the flesh. The richness of soul to penetrate mine and make me into the woman less lost and lonely.

I shiver, from deep within myself.

Alone I am in this dance of mind. Brilliantly bright. Brilliantly kind. Tender. Deep. An open book turned asunder. The worn spine split upward into the heaven’s tears. Angel wings tarnished, bent, left for good.

I wait, from deep within myself.

Save me. Oh, someone, I do not know. Save me from my bitter-torn vision of life. This someone who was not made for this place of earth, this uproar of fanatical placating, this constant course of soothing gone wrong.

I stagger, from deep within myself.

Broken, I am, I speak. From the highest peak within. Standing on the ledge of tomorrow. Leaping into the unknown. Free fall. Tumbling into the newest unwanted.

I land, from deep within myself.

And here I am again. The same swollen woman filled with the forgotten pieces of beauty. Shattered and made whole in the misery of my making. Here I am again, swinging from the stars of my forgotten soul.

I shine, from deep within myself.