Living Inside A Glass Jar
My mind is a fragile terrarium—
each breath fogs the pane with memory.
I watch myself moving inside,
an echo pacing the perimeter of pain.
Hyper-awareness hums like a live wire,
every sound—a warning, every shadow—a test.
Survival becomes the only rhythm I know,
the pulse of endurance mistaken for life.
Half alive, I measure the days by tremors,
trauma’s fingerprint pressed into thought.
They called it normal, this ache that never sleeps,
they called it growing, I call it ghosting.
My body remembers what my voice forgets,
the hypothalamus—its keeper of storms.
Neurons whisper in static and code,
translating terror into muscle, into bone.
I have stood behind this glass so long
that reflections have learned my name.
My smile, rehearsed for the living,
hides a tremble the mirror can’t unsee.
But I am tired of being the specimen,
the observer, the observed, the cage.
I want the window to open—not shatter,
to let air in without letting myself spill out.
Healing is rebellion against reflex,
choosing stillness when the body says run.
Choosing love when the mind recalls harm,
choosing now when memory insists on then.
I am learning to live behind this thick glass,
until the day I no longer need the barrier.
Until touch no longer threatens to burn,
and breath writes peace on the other mirrored side.
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