365 Days (Part 1) | ✓

184. Chemistry

184. Chemistry: Choose an element and write a poem or story that uses that word in one of the lines.

I am bound. Iron chains snake around my body, overlapping themselves so many times and hooked so firmly in the cement of the ground that there is no chance for me to escape. I feel them tighten sometimes, cutting into my skin, leaving dents that I'll always carry. Every so often, more links are added, coiling more and more around my broken body in a tangled mess.

I can't breathe, but no one cares.

I can see me, in the mirror. I only ever see it it occasionally, when the darkness alleviates and the whispers cease. In that moment of clarity, I see -- in the reflection -- a duplicate of myself standing beside me. This other self stands still, but in her hands she forms the links that are added to my chain. I am binding myself up.

Stop! I want to scream. I must stop!

But the chains cut across my mouth too, strapping my tongue down and slicing into the sensitive skin on the side of my mouth.

Then the light is dimmed by a resurgence of darkness, and the other me -- the chain maker -- is gone. I know she is there somewhere, but not seeing her makes her irrelevant.

I want to escape, but I cannot deny that there is a safety and a sick pleasure in being bound by these iron chains. I am familiar with this. If I was released, would it even be freedom? People would see the red marks snaking across my flesh from the chains, and they would know what I have been through.

They would know and they would, by their own disgust, place their own chains upon me.

I want to be free. I want to be free. I want to be free.

But even as I chant it, the other me stands in the darkness, making my chain longer.

*

Analogy: Drugs bind you.