A Witness in the Windowless Room

Sometimes,

my life feels like a reality unfolding in a distant land,

and I am merely a witness,

watching through a pinhole

from a dark, windowless room

where I do not have limbs.

There is no door.

No sun.

Only the loud pulsation of my heart

beating against the bars of my ribs,

and the suffocating scent of my fears

curling like poison around my breath.

I watch myself laugh at dinner tables

where the conversations feel

like foreign films without subtitles.

I see my mouth moving,

hear the sound of my voice

agreeing to things

the girl in the room would never choose.

The girl on the screen

nods when she means no,

smiles when she wants to scream,

says "I'm fine" when she's dissolving

like salt in rain.

And I want to reach through

the pinhole,

shake her by the shoulders,

tell her to stop

performing happiness

like a scene from a Shakespearean play

for an audience

that doesn't even see her.

But I have no hands here.

No voice that carries

beyond these walls

that I cannot touch,

cannot measure,

cannot break.

The room smells like

childhood bedrooms

where I hid under blankets,

waiting for storms to pass

except the storms

never lived outside.

They lived in the way

adults spoke to each other,

in the way the world

stripped a child of the naivety

she thought would last forever

in the spaces between

what was said

and what was meant.

Sometimes I press my face

against the pinhole

until it hurts,

trying to see more

of the life I'm supposed

to be living,

but the view never widens.

It feels like walking across

a landscape in my nightmares

it is water,then grass,then nothing.

I see fragments:

her hands folding laundry

that doesn't belong to her,

her feet walking paths

she didn't choose,

her eyes looking in mirrors

and not recognizing

the reflection gazing back.

The worst part

is watching her

make decisions

I would never make,

staying in rooms

that make her small,

loving people

who love the idea of her

more than her actual self,

apologizing for taking up space

she was always meant to fill.

Because they told me

that walls listen and talk

I want to whisper through the walls:

You are not too much.

You never were.

Stop trying to fit

into boxes

that were never built

for someone like you.

But the pinhole

only works one way.

And wall, like the world has conspired

to not convey my message.

She cannot hear me.

She cannot see me

watching,

cannot feel me

willing her

to wake up.

The fears here

have their own ecosystem,

they breed in corners

I cannot reach,

multiply in the darkness

between heartbeats,

whisper things like:

What if you're not enough?

What if they leave

when they see

who you really are?

What if this is all

you'll ever be?

And the fog

gets thicker,

harder to breathe through, see through,

until I'm not sure

if I'm the one

in the room

or the one

on the screen.

Sometimes

I wonder

if this is what

dissociation feels like,

this weird splitting

between the self

that lives

and the self

that watches

the living happen

to someone else.

This distance

between who I am

and who I appear to be,

between what I feel

and what I show,

between the person

I was meant to become

and the one

I learned to be

for everyone else's comfort.

The pinhole shows me

all the moments

she should have said no,

all the times

she should have walked away,

all the chances

she had to choose herself

and chose everyone else instead.

And I am here,

limbless and voiceless,

watching her live

a life that feels

like wearing

someone else's clothes,

always a little too tight,

never quite right,

but she's forgotten

what her own clothes

feel like.

The room has no clock,

no calendar,

no way to measure

how long I've been

watching

this strange performance

of a life

that should be mine.

But sometimes,

just sometimes,

I see her pause.

Look around

like she can feel

someone watching.

Like she remembers,

for just a millisecond,

that there's supposed to be

more than this.

And in those moments,

the pinhole seems

to widen slightly,

the room seems

less dark,

and I think ,

maybe she can hear me

after all.

Maybe one day

the wall will crack,

Or it will send my words across,

the door will appear,

and I will step

from the windowless room

into the light

where she waits

for me to come home

to myself.

Maybe one day

the witness

and the witnessed

will remember

they were always

the same person,

just separated

by the walls

we build

when the world

becomes too much

to feel

all at once.

Until then,

I wallow

in this darkness,

breathing smoke,

heart beating

against ribs

that feel more like

prison bars

than protection,

watching through

the pinhole

at a life

I'm still learning

how to live.