Ropes

Do you recall, clearly, a time when you used to dream? No, not the confusing dreams that become nightmares, not your day musings of impossible future scenarios, but dreams: pure and true, and happy. Can you bring one to mind as vivid as the night you dreamed it?

Can you remember the days when you would laugh at the world's rules, and tell it to leave you alone as you ran away from the voices, laughing ecstatically because it felt so good to be alive? Because you could feel the grass at your feet and the warm breeze whipping your hair back and forth as your laughter was thrown back at you with the sun shining above and the calm waves of the sea lapping by the shoreline not far below.

Do you still remember when you lived? Or does the memory of when you started existing instead cover that in such a black shroud, the memory eluding you every time? 

Do you look at the sky and miss the feeling of being free? Do you look at yourself in the mirror and see the empty chasm where your soul used to reside? Do you feel the ropes binding your ankles and your hands, so tight that they've began chafing the skin? Do your wings still try to break from the bonds that hold them? Do the stars in your eyes still shine, or have they turned into black holes? Has the supernova gone out of your system? Do you still feel your heart beating? Can you hear it? Or has the iron cage that they wrapped around it so tightly constricted it so much that it hurts when it beats, and it hurts when you breathe, and all you want is to rip it out with your bare hands, but you can't because they've been tied?

Do you still cry out in the darkness, for someone to save you? Do you still believe someone will? Because your voice has broken over tears so many damned times, and you've screamed yourself hoarse, you don't know if you still have a voice; and no one came. No one cared. 

Do you still remember when you thought life was worth living?

Do you still feel the rare warm breeze from your prison cell?

Do you still try to fly, even when you don't remember how, even when you can't?

Do tears still fall from your eyes?

Does your heart still beat?

Are you still alive?