The Mannequin's Cage
The ceiling sheds its plaster like winter skin.
No warning bell. The walls bow in.
They swore the beams would hold the sky.
The timber snaps. You don’t ask why.
Where do you hide when it feels like a cage?
Choking on the text of an unwritten page.
An architecture built on a lie.
Watch the rafters splinter as hours crawl by.
The gears freeze solid. The axle cracks.
Steel on steel on rusted tracks.
How long can you polish a surface that’s dead?
How many miles can you run in your head?
Mask the decay till your fingers bleed.
You can’t harvest wheat from a poisoned seed.
The iron is cold. The oil runs dry.
The phantom behind you begins to cry.
The frost demands a blossom from a frozen bough.
It doesn't care that you're empty right now.
Choke down the gravel. Lock up the tongue.
Hide the bruises where the pendulum swung.
Walk through the daylight with gold on your chest.
The crows in your lungs are building a nest.
Every path is a dead end memorised well.
Every success is a room in this hell.
Look in the mirror. See nothing but smoke.
A stranger wearing your clothes as a joke.
Convinced it’s a crime to exist in your skin.
The lights are too sharp. The noise is too loud.
Drowning alone in the middle of a crowd.
The emotional static has flattened to grey.
The heat of the anger has faded away.
A mannequin stands behind display glass.
Watching the shadows and spectators pass.
Moulded in plastic, painted to smile,
Dressed up to play the part for a while.
No pulse in the wrist, no weight in the chest,
Perfectly still and flawlessly dressed.
You press on the surface, you knock on the frame,
But hollow plastic answers the name.
A cold, rigid shell that can’t even bleed,
Frozen in place for a crowd you must feed.
So you drop the shield. Stop trying to fight.
Let the black ink bleed into the night.
No hands are coming to pull you from the floor.
Simply lie down where the concrete is cold.
Watch the whole structure finally unfold.
The theatre goes black. The audience leaves.
Nobody stays for the person who grieves.
Now look at the quiet. Look at the room.
The fog rolls in to inherit the gloom.
A heavy, thick grey filling up the mind,
Leaving the warmth of the world far behind.
Broken glass litters the path to the door.
Shards of old promises cover the floor.
The fabric tears.
The shadow dissolves.
All the noise stops.
And the air goes cold.
Copyright © Anya Bath-Samarakoon | Year Posted 2026
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