Brainwash

They wiped my thoughts with antiseptic hands, wrung my mind through linen logic and hung me between breakfast and scheduled silence. Every hour—accounted for. Every spark—neutralised. Brainwashed. Hope came in timed doses— measured in milligrams and dispensed with a paper cup and plastic smile. I swallowed the sun in tablet form until it glowed from the inside like a malfunctioning lamp. Brainwashed. I used to speak in fractured gold, each sentence a riddle spun from starlight and defiance. They taught me to speak correctly— which meant quietly, which meant not at all. Brainwashed. They dressed me in fabric the colour of pause, stitched my name into the hem of conformity, taught me not to wander outside the red line of permissible imagination. Brainwashed. They made me fill in boxes: Do you still hear them? Do you still dream strange? Do you still think you are more than this? I circled no, and smiled. Brainwashed. My mirror stopped recognising me. It showed a still ocean where once there were storms. I waved—but my reflection had better things to do than remember who I was before routine became religion. Brainwashed. But some nights— when the world forgets to monitor me, and the ceiling isn’t watching— I find poems hidden under my tongue, fierce and unprescribed. I whisper them backwards to keep them safe. Still writing. Or so they think. Because inside the silence, beneath the disinfected compliance, something unwashed pulses— raw, brilliant, and unfinished. I remember.