Empty Cage

by Sophie Proud

They say it wrong to “Let it Out”.
How can you free an empty cage?
It’s just the cold, the empty space
That loneliness tends to bring.

But I don’t want that. Never did.
My fingers curl into a fist
And all I feel and all I know
Is the drumming of the phrase “Let Go”.

My throat is tight and I can’t breathe.
My head is spinning, spinning round
And vision clouds and freedom sighs
When all your ears and mind can hear
Is the whispered darkness “Lies”.

It’s all a shade, the world is failing.
I cannot see beyond your eyes.
The hate, the nothingness inside…
It’s all within the lucid lies.
And that’s when all the screams begin.
Soft whispers turning loud and clear.
A voice, once strong, now pleads for sin,
For love, for death, for fright and dread
For anything to clear her head.
It’s cutting through the rain-stained glass
And echoes through your darkened ties.
It’s loud, it’s there, it’s all you hear.
The voice that keeps on screaming “Lies”.

Take a step behind and rise your hand in front.
There are cuts inside,
Like small teeth bites.
Our hands are mouths with no translation
And that’s why loneliness will search
And bring in any other mouth
That can just speak a tongue of gesture.
Because around you, all is quiet.
But the screams… The screams are loud.
And they are simply in your head.
Will you free them? Let them die?
Let the sidewalks make them cry?
It’s that scream that hurts your throat
And uses you like a dead quarry.
For hands are foreign, with no words.
And the question that you ask and pray never to answer,
Was it every smiling hug a silent way to say “I’m sorry”?

A fist meets a wall, a scream hits a chord.
They hurt inside, they crawl like worms eaten by maggots
And you cannot free an empty cage…
Just like you cannot free your rage.

The screaming, cutting through your hands,
It’s all so silent, grains in sands
Forever lost, forever gone.
That’s all that hurts. The screams…
The screams, the screams, the screams
That fight to burst with burned despise
And scream and scream just “WRETCHED LIES!”

That’s all that’s left.
No matter how hard she tries.
From all the words, from all the feelings, all those years,
The only tale she can now tell
Is of a drumming song, drenched in tears,
In anguish and a raw-voiced “Lies”.

It’s quiet in the street.
It’s quiet in the house.
The stars are burning, being all stone.
They fill your pupils, eyelids sown.
They try to share their silence with you.
But the drums, the drums, the drums of war
The never-ending, dreadful lies.

Never to stop.

Never to try.

A child on a window sill looked up, fingers tapping on the wall.
The drums all kneeled.
And the girl that never dared to scream became a woman.

And she screamed.