There she stood, the grass underneath her black converse swaying in the cool breeze. The sun hid behind gray clouds, its presence unnoticeable in the morning air. There was a sense of freedom, although she stood behind fences that made her a prisoner. She could feel the earth below her, even though it was cut off by chain linked barriers and roads that held everything in.
The monsters around her swelled and shifted, but she was alone in the crowd. She looked up into the clouds, soaking up the sun that peered through the fog. She breathed in the air, knowing she would be in the cage soon, surrounded by white walls and blank faces.
The girl closed her eyes, letting the air seep into her skin and she hoped it would give her the power to withstand the prison. In the back of her mind she wished it wasn’t like this.
She pictured herself as she had been before the fire alarm had gone off, before the herd of people had rushed out of the door and spread out into the grassy field that lined the sidewalk. She had been sitting alone in a room with white tiles, listening to the discussion about things she didn’t understand that proved more and more that she was stupid and useless like they said she was.
This place made her lose herself and messed with her sanity. She struggled every day to not become the machine they all wanted, but she was fading fast. She was slowly saying goodbye to her soul and hello to her vanity, the numbers and letters consuming her relentlessly. These people, these wardens to this prison, these monsters, all had said they would be her friends and take her into their arms. Instead of help they threw knives with chapters she had to read by the end of the week, words that circled in her head that didn’t make sense. The system of bells and prison gates was all wrong, that kept her from sleeping.
As a child she had dreams and goals. The prison walls swiped them away with a dry erase marker on a blank canvas. The chalk board had thrown away the rope swing in her backyard, and the trampoline that sat idle and lonely.
The girl had become too tired from long nights of calculations that were branded with a sharpened pencil in her mind. The sun had set in her blue eyes and was replaced with numbers and letters that told her she was stupid.
The feeling of the outdoors brought back her lost connection to the land. Just a glimpse of the clouds let the memories of trees she used to climb filter into her mind. Oh how she dreamed of days without prison, without the dull faces and black stares. She dreamed of the sun on her back, the wind in her hair, and the smell of freedom.
A shrill bell rang out, signaling the prisoners that the building was safe and no fire raged inside. She stood still, trying to sink into the Earth. Bodies pulsed around her, screaming and shouting like animals. Someone pushed her from behind and she fell forward into the person in front of her, who turned to glare at her before being sucked through the door back into the prison. She followed with the current of people, until the cold air hit her skin and chilled her bones. The crowd filtered down the halls, their calls drifting farther away from her until she was the only one left.
There a girl stood, wondering why life was so hard and why she wasn’t allowed to dream. In the corner of a room sat a girl in a hard chair drowning in pencils that scratched out her voice and left eraser dust on her creativity. There she stood now alone in a windowless world that told her who she was.
All the pointless decisions and answers swirled around in her mind. Her fingers cracked and broke off from all the bubbles she had filled in. Her mind went blank with the pressure of deadlines and due dates. Soon the girl that stood alone in the hall was no more.
Her being had been erased with the swiftness of an expo marker and cleared as if she was simply a calculation in a silver box with buttons and numbers that now became her mind.
The trees, the sun, the sky, the rope swing that hung from a tree by her window was now… gone.
