The War Within

Thoughts coil around my mind, Not chains—no, chains can be broken. These are roots, tangled deep, Threaded through marrow, Anchored in places I cannot reach. I pull. They tighten. I resist. They hold. Every struggle feeds them, Every breath is barbed wire in my lungs. My own making binds me, Trapped between what is real And what my mind refuses to release. I chase clarity, but it is fleeting— A shimmer in the dark, gone before I grasp it. What am I searching for in this endless maze? A key? A door? A silence that does not break. But silence is never empty— It is a canvas where fear paints itself whole. I fight, I claw, I tear at the walls— But they are made of thought. I pull at the roots— But they are my own hands, clenching tighter. This war is unwinnable. This war is unending. This war is— No. I stop. I stop running. I stop struggling. I stop feeding the thing that feeds on me. And in that stillness— The walls do not crumble, The chains do not break, The roots do not vanish. But they loosen. I see them now for what they are— Not barriers. Not shackles. Not a prison. But something I can shape. Something I can wield. Something that was never against me, Only waiting to be mastered. Fear will not write this war. Doubt will not carve my fate. I will not bow to a mind that is mine to command. I am not a prisoner. I am not the war. I am the architect.