The Glass Box Graveyard..

They came for me in silence,
shadow figures with hands like iron,
dragging me to the prison of my reflection
a glass box, small enough to crush my knees,
wide enough to show me my own fear.

The sea roared like a mob,
cold hands clawing at the hull,
as they carried me to its edge.
The box sealed shut, air already stale,
each breath a countdown to the abyss.

They dropped me with laughter swallowed by waves.
I sank, watching the surface warp and shatter
until sunlight became shards of glass
drifting above me, too far to touch.

Down, down to the graveyard below,
where the sea floor shimmered with death,
glass coffins lined in the ocean floor, scattered,
their captives frozen in silent screams.
Bones and rags danced to the current,
fish weaving through the remnants of lives
lived in cages, forgotten in the dark, drowned in their own last breaths.

I landed among them,
a new exhibit in the museum of despair.
I could see my neighbors,
their empty sockets, their brittle smiles,
their hands clawing at glass long ago.
Was this their last rebellion?
To fight until the air betrayed them?

The hours stretched thin,
light bending into twilight,
and I clung to my last stale breaths
as if hope could live in this tomb.
But the air turned sour,
and the darkness crept in,
slow, hungry, inescapable and inevitable.

I screamed, but the sound curled inward,
my voice my only companion, writing my farewell on glass frosted my dieing breath,
And as the last gasp of oxygen burned my lungs,
I saw the truth reflected in the glass:
this was no grave, no nightmare.
This was life
an endless suffocation,
a routine of despair,
a symphony of gasps,
morning to night,
until the light dies
and we are all left
alone,
sinking,
Inescapable