Anywhere But Here

The walls close in, peeling paint whispering stories I’ve worn too long. The air clings heavy, stale as forgotten dreams, suffocating, soaked in dust. The clock ticks louder than the fractures in my chest, its hands dragging me through an endless loop of nowhere. Even the shadows feel stifling, their jagged edges curling inward, hungry to swallow me whole. I’ve dreamt of escape - to where the sky consumes the horizon whole, where the wind is a reckless lover who never lingers long. To forests that hum with emerald light, to cities alive with neon veins, where my name dissolves in the endless roar of strangers. Anywhere but here, where the air tightens like a noose, where memories gnaw at my brittle bones, where silence is a jagged scream I cannot outrun. I see myself on distant shores, waves tugging at my aching ankles, but the ocean only reflects my shadow, unforgiving, unyielding, dragging through every fractured sunrise. Anywhere but here, I whisper to the relentless night, but even as I dream, I feel the crushing weight of this place - a gravity I cannot escape, a tether carved deep into my skin, one I’ll carry until I learn to make peace with the prison I built.