Member Poem

My heart's wrapped in barbed wire,
Trapped in a glass case
With every beat it bleeds
Bleeds love, and want, and fear
Everything I feel when I think too hard,
When I let my mind wander off the paved path,
Into the darkness beyond
It bleeds with the fear I'll never see you again
Shards of broken dreams
Breaking me apart at the seams

I've always been a hopeless romantic
I built a temple out of abstract love,
Its walls a mosaic of other people's hearts,
But I'm stuck screaming at the gates
My tears watering the flowers that other people pick as they walk past
I want to fall in love the same way I want to fly
But gossamer dreams dissolve when they hit the light
And Icarus plummets, his wings not strong enough to hold him aloft
I plummet.

Is any of this real?
A whirlwind of memories flash past,
Spinning too fast for me to grasp
And I think maybe they belong to someone else
Maybe they were never mine
Because how could they be?
I'm encased in glass
If I think too hard, I'll shatter
So I shove it all back in that box
Throw away the key
Except I think my heart is suffocating
Slowly rotting from the inside out
It beats at a different speed
And I can't keep up

Why can't I be like you?
Why can't I feel what you feel?
Be who you want me to be, who I want to be?

Why can't my heart be free?