Merciel

I beseech you, World, shake this comatose flesh out of slumber!
Carry my pleas to heart! Break down the door
of this cage before these white walls become my grave.
I open reluctant eyes to darkness, crawl to the bathroom
to blanch my face in the moldy sink only to discover
I’m trapped in bed stranded in a recurring nightmare.

I pray you, Sun, pry sewn eyes from sleep with marvelous light!
Break me out of Babel! Are your eternal rays that part seas
impotent to creep through the plastic blinds erected
by family and friends in the name of comfort?
In rare moments when I briefly wake, I find no star
outside to deliver me into dawn, so, I fall into bed again.

Nobody calls, nobody prays; I may be trapped here the rest
of my days. Can’t reach a knob, can’t find a key,
but I discover lock-picks grated onto me:
ten razors to tear through mummified flesh,
unsheathe the frozen heart; ten whips to crack
the glacier shell, hatch the chick out of its hell.
Saturate it with fire to sweat out the tears,
squeeze out each drop of fear to restore buoyancy.
Liberated cells surface through the cracks
to welcome me back to the living world.
Fatigued, atrophied, and disoriented, but alive enough
to step outside and taste the air of life, perhaps see her
again.