• Cage of Ice
    by: Eien Kiseki

    I bury my face in my worn jacket
    The fur tickling my frozen skin
    I heave another painful breath as I wait
    I wait for the end

    The snow threatens to conceal me completely
    Tiny snowflakes cut my face and arms
    The wind slices through my bones with lighting speed
    I am being torn apart

    I feel naked in this barren landscape
    A tiny stain on a white shirt
    My clothes now are as white as the snow
    They do nothing for me

    I am frozen inside and out
    My lips kissed blue by Jack Frost
    My eyelashes are crystals of ice
    My hair long since turned stone

    I am a sculpture now
    This forest is my garden
    I can no longer move for fear of breaking
    I am trapped

    I close my eyes for the last time
    And wait for the darkness to close in
    My breathing has slowed
    Leaving my body in a thin wisp of steam

    I am falling now
    Through an endless hole
    An abyss of darkness
    No up or down

    My back arches
    Twists with pain
    Am I not dead?
    Should I not be free of pain?

    I writhe in the air
    Bones popping and changing
    I claw at my skin
    Try to shed my body

    The pain stops
    The darkness lightens
    And I am free
    The chain that was my body cut

    But I stop
    I am not free
    The darkness does not glow white
    Red and orange and black

    I look down and I see my body
    Covered in the snow
    Pure white and motionless
    Innocent

    I am not innocent
    I never was
    And the wings that grow from my back,
    They are not white

    Black and shiny
    Thick and slimy like oil
    They are jagged
    Razors that cut my soul


    I fall

    These wings are not for flying
    They are for dragging
    They drag their victims down

    And there is only pain
    Pain and regret
    Regret for what I have done
    To become what I am

    And there is fire
    Fire that does not burn the body
    But the soul as well
    Engulfing every part of me

    And I am gone
    No memories are left
    No one will remember me
    Because I never was

    Was anything more than hate
    Hate, trapped in a body
    Captured
    Frozen in a cage of ice