Glass Prison Poem by Dan Katoha Jr

I. She still lives in my dreams…

I close my eyes, and there she is.
Her smile is a crack where my thoughts drown,
A frozen glimmer in the crystal of my nights.
She walks through the corridors of my dreams,
Like a ghost sure of her kingdom,
Beautiful, alive… too alive.

Each level of the dream brings me closer to her.
I descend, again, and again,
Hoping to find that scent, that voice, that skin.
I know it's only a lie,
But it's the sweetest lie I've ever tasted.

She looks at me as if I were still whole.
She speaks to me as if I'd never lost.
And I, like a desperate child,
I answer.
I play along.
I build a world for her,
A world where death does not exist.

II. But I know what I've done…

I locked her away.
There, in that cage of illusion,
In that underground city where memories never age.

I kept her alive because I never knew how to let her go.
I carved her from the marble of my regrets,
And I said to her:
'You can stay here. I made you perfect.'

But she isn't real.
She's only the reflection of my guilt,
The ghost of a promise I broke.
A woman who loved me…
And whom I pushed into the void,
To escape the emptiness I had become.

She is no more.
And yet, I keep her alive.
Again and again.
Because I'm afraid of a world without her.
Because I prefer a golden lie to a sharp truth.
Because I am a coward.

III. And if I let you go…

There is a door I never open.
A room at the back of the dream,
Where she sits, unmoving,
Her eyes full of mixed reproach and tenderness.

That's where I put her.
That's where I keep her.
Prisoner of my memory.
Hostage of my grief.

Sometimes she says to me:
'You don't have to stay.'
But I reply:
'If I leave, you die.'

The truth is, my love…
You're already dead.
And I am the one who refuses the burial.
I am that mad widower who lays his love in limbo,
And wakes it every night,
Like a god too human, too broken.

Maybe one day,
I will let you go.
I will climb a floor instead of descending.
I will let the top spin.
And I won't wait to see if it falls.

But not tonight.
Tonight again,
I fall asleep in your prison.
And I love you,
The way one loves a mirage.

According to Katoha Jr.