I close the window on myself before I break my gaze,
Cut short the first and only breath of air I’ve had in days.

What is this thing that moves my hand instinctively ahead,
This foreign arm that reaches in to cut my single thread 

Of lonely twine I’d woven with the hope of sewing shut
The ever growing rift between my dreams and present rut.

But what surprised me most was just how fast this urge had come,
To keep myself encased within and quickly I succumb

To such an urge that clearly only wants to cause me harm,
Compulsively it takes control to seize my weakened arm.  

Compulsively is right, this is no singular event,
But ‘stead a pattern I designed to foster discontent.

But don’t you think it’s weird that being forced against your will,
To wander through your waste of life perpetually ill, 

Is somehow even worse when both the forcer and the forced
Sit side by side inside your head entirely divorced

From all things you used to like about your former name; 
How can I be a victim here and villain just the same?

Compulsive and repulsive are a complimenting pair
To drape across my shoulders like the second skin I wear.

But can you call a second skin a separate part of you,
For when it’s worn both day and night and lived in through and through?

Who’s hand was it that slammed that window on my moment’s rest?
Who really has control in here, who’s person and who’s pest?

Even though I sit alone with no one else in sight,
I whisper to myself and keep my voice low out of fright

That someone might just hear me speak and wonder who I am,
And conjure up a thought of me whose life I cannot damn. 

I do not wish to be perceived while standing in my shame,
In case a version of myself I loathe becomes my fame. 

I much prefer the company of strangers I don’t know.
They’ve no idea the life I lead or blackness of my woe.

I’m always on the outside of my world and looking in,
And mourning all the times that come and go or could have been. 

They say nostalgia’s longing for a time you miss the most,
So why am I nostalgic for a life spent as a ghost?