She saw the world through stained glass eyes,
It seemed so huge and scary.
A world of muddled thoughts and muddled minds,
Of racing through time and space.
The hypocritic press inviting starvation but
criticising the skeletons all the time.
She could not understand this place,
It was like swimming through treacle.
Makes no sense, and you're going down
Faster than you can go forwards.
Always struggling, always falling back.
There's always something you lack
In this world where money is God
And everything is meaningless without it.
So she built a wall around herself,
To keep the world out and herself in,
With a little slit through which she could look,
Observe the madness all around.
This place she hid in was made of bone.
A cage of her ribs, the cell of her skull.
Walking on stick thin legs still she kept on.
She looked around with horror and fear,
Craving love - craving to let someone in,
Someone to save her, yet withdrawing from every touch.
Even if she kept the world out,
It could still seep in.
She sank beneath the waves and could not swim.
She wanted desperately to live but
All she felt she was was death.
"The world despises me," she thought,
but her mind was lost in mazes
Of food and calories and blind alleys.
She could never hear the calls of love for her.
But when she blocked up the slit through which she looked,
And at last all the world was gone,
All there was for her was fear and pain,
And she didn't understand - this was what she was hiding from.
She cried out for help,
But still nobody could hear.
Or if they heard, they could not get her out,
She was locked in so tight.
Then one day the cage fell down.
It crashed onto the ground,
With strangers staring all around.
The people came and took the cage to the place with white walls.
They battered down the iron bars,
Got in under the stainless steel skin.
Flooded her with love and hope.
At first their language was alien to her,
She could not understand a word they said,
The only words she spoke were of pain,
Of food and weight it seemed to them.
They got a translator in to sit at the slit in the cage,
The hole they had made.
She sat at the slit and listened and talked.
For the people in white she translated the words
The girl used to speak,
And gradually, the cage was opened a crack.
They gave her armour, they gave her weapons,
They taught her the language of the Outside World.
They set her off on her way with new hope.
She struggled and fought, sometimes she wanted her cage back.
She was angry for taking away her only place
Where she felt she had meaning.
Though the world is upside down and inside out,
She must struggle on, fighting the tide forever.
It will never be the same for her, for she remembers
The cage in which she once lived,
And craves the security it gave.
But she goes on, for there are those in the world
Who understand and offer their help,
A guiding hand.
There is love enough in the world for her.
Follow the breaking wave, follow the flow.
Push the slit wider, search for what you crave,
Fight and fight and live,
You only have to be brave
Enough to shout aloud for what you want
