Sitting with wild thoughts that swallowed her up like pages of her favorite childhood books.
The characters were no longer fictional but each had a face for her to recognize.
Breeze blowing softly in from the screen door where others play.
She is inside.
Always inside.
Staring out windows wishing she could fly with them.
Sitting on wires like trapeze artists.
Whirling in her head as she falls onto her bed at night.
Twenty years later staring at a different ceiling counting cracks and beams of light that make their way in through colored curtains.
Inside, always inside.

We used to lay on those sheets but now they cover the sky.
There is a taste in the air that fills me with a bit of regret.
Where am I, as I'm crawling through grass to find her hands?
Dug up like brittle bones, cat's claws through our bags on garbage night.
Are there secrets you want to share?
Tangled silk strands wrap us together and I taste the ocean on you now.

Maybe I read too deeply into the lyrics.
Maybe I hear the details too clearly.
Throw it away, I hold it all too dear to me.
I can hear her whispering still.
I never let her go.
And now I'm stuck inside.

-Saree McClaran