I've lost my heart in the ruins of my destructive mind;

Inspiration has left my once-lively spirit.

I take a strangled, short breath,

Attempting to loosen the reigns of insanity

That coil about my neck and restrict my intake of air.

I kiss the page where beautiful red poetry

Once lined the paper in disorganized perfection,

But where now mere scars remain, fading away.

Give it back to me, please.

My life was torn from me; my heart and being were stolen

Like the last warm breaths of summer

Twisted and wrenched away by the malicious intent of winter.

Music no longer holds magic, it has become a soundless shout

That lands on deaf ears still trying to use it as a last hope

To drown out the thoughts that destroy me.

Words continue to betray and abandon me,

Although we were once the closest of friends.

What is an eye without its sight?

What is a heart void of love and lungs without air?

I am alive, yet I have no life within me;

My face, my past, my memories, my hopes, and my dreams

Are nonexistent and not my own.

Ghosts of times not so long ago haunt me,

Tempting me with the life and hope they hold,

And through the empty tears of a grey soul

The mistakes of the past find me with the bitter lessons

That have been learned too late to go back and fix.

Don't trap the creatures of the wild

And do not attempt to cage and tame them,

For they belong to the wild and the wild alone,

And will never survive for long without their freedom.

Just so do the heart and poem reside in a wild world;

Capture them and their spirit will break,

Take away their air and their light will die out.

I wish to be free of all that holds me back,

Like a kite straining against the string of reality

And wishing to be free of all that binds it down,

And yet freedom comes at the cost of someone.

Away, away with the tormenting thoughts that break me,

To the wind and vast currents of the ocean with them

So that I may never be touched by their chains again.

Break free, break free, my spirit cries in earnest,

Be the child you once loved so dearly.

I wish for it all, to be again like a summer storm,

Untamed and unrestrained, fearsome and wild and free,

Holding the darkness of the night

And the swift flashing light of the sun.

To be alone once more, to be utterly careless

Without the relentless torture of my mind;

This is what I desire with all of my being.

And yet guilt and doubt still plague upon me,

Filling me and choking me like a poisonous fog.

My tears pour in a saltwater ocean down my cheeks

In an endless, violent, overwhelming tide,

Reminiscent of feelings I once knew

That swept my heart in a powerful flood

But have long since left on different tides.

My mind plays an endless game of tag with me,

I the prey, my thoughts the predator,

My life the playground, and my sanity the bargaining chip.

My mind finds me once more, at my most vulnerable,

And pounces on the chance to fling me

Into yet another tornado of its sinister creation,

A tornado of spinning thoughts and debris and darkness

That slowly tears me apart from the inside.

I am lost. Words stumble over themselves

In a desperate attempt to get out all at once

To reveal the madness within,

But they end up blockading themselves just behind my lips

And restricting all coherent communication.

Break free, break free, once more.

My heart pounds against the bars of its rib cage,

It too trying to escape me and show what it can truly feel.

Underestimated, misunderstood, restrained;

Fear muffles my cries for help

And continues to pile weight onto my burdensome shackles.

I wish for longing and nostalgia, any proof I'm still alive

And not a dead spirit condemned to walk the earth,

Lost and consumed by the choking emptiness.

Senseless, the insanity still pours out,

But my time limit with release comes to an end;

The few lines of freedom I have bleed dry.

All that I'm left with is the knowledge and forgotten pain

Of a heart once filled with inspiration and life

That these are, brutally and fiercely so, my words,

My anger, my loss, my existence, and my wild,

And that this is my poem, and mine alone.