Princess

Locked high above in the highest room of the tallest tower, the princess sits on the windowsill. Alone. She looks to the world outside, to the trees, just at eye level, to the other turrets far below her, to the people that move in dream-like slowness below. She breathes the outside air through the screen that presses its checker-box pattern into her exposed thigh. The breeze is pleasant, she thinks. Even in this room that is her prison, the breeze can come in. She looks out, taking in the world.

When she tires of those below her, the princess turns to look at her tiny cell. She sees the bed with her sheets and her books, and her desk, and her walls, white and blank but for the few hangings she has put up. Her eyes flick to the door. Unlocked. As it has been her entire life. She is imprisoned in a room to which she holds the key. The door remains unlocked. Yet the princess never leaves.

The one time she did, one time she let herself out of her above the world prison, she was afraid. The words locked inside her throat and she couldn't breathe let alone talk to anyone she passed. Everyone seemed too close, they moved so fast.

They left her behind. By herself, on the ground. She knows, intellectually , that no one cares what she is doing, yet there is the ever lingering feeling of being watched. While she is on the ground, removed from the safety of her prison, anyone could be watching her, mocking her, or just ignoring her.

It is with this in mind that she wraps her arms around herself and flees back to her tower, shutting the door behind her.

But not locking it. She never locks the door. Afraid of it though she is, the princess still wants the others to talk to her, to like her. To want to hear what she has to say and how she has to say it. She wants the people to come into her room more than anything except how much she wants them to stay away. They terrify her, yet the people on the ground also fill her with a longing that hurts so bad it leaves her gasping for breath.

The princess, trapped behind her unlocked door, is trapped within her walls. But more than that, she is trapped within herself.

Breathe

Breathe in, breathe out. That's all I can do, right? Even though each pull of oxygen makes the life within me hurt. Not like shards of glass, but instead like a bruise. Blood pushing up against the skin that just barely holds it beneath the surface. Hurts. Not so good. Hurts bad. Like...like a child in pain. Hurts like a whimper in the darkness. Like the wind knocked from my lungs in a fall. Or a punch in the stomach. Hurts like that.

They make it easier, my friends who know what he has done to me. They don't try to stick up for him as I expected. They tell me they are losing respect for him. That he doesn't deserve the agony I feel over him. Or my continued anxiety. In my heart I know that I don't want the hurt it would take to continue to be friends with him. We had a friendship. I don't think I can keep it up. Friends tell me he doesn't deserve it. He is so good. But he was bad to me. But he wasn't. He only did what I asked him. I needed an answer. And he gave me one. I thought I could live with it. But he is telling me to stop trying so what if I really do? Wouldn't it be easier to NOT feel this pain behind my skin?

Breathe, breathe, breathe. It hurts every single goddamn time. Life without love. Hurts.

I am loved. Just not in the way I want. Girls like being physical just as much as guys. Trouble is, I at least associate physicality with...feelings of a romantic nature. Why do guys not? How can holding someone by their soul not be twined in with feelings of, at the very least, lust?

I feel tired. Despite having slept all day, I feel exhausted. To bed now, I suppose. May I wake and find that this has all been a nightmare.

But I know better. Not even in narcotics induced sleep can I escape him. He hurts me again and again and again and he is not even himself conscious of the pain he inflicts.