amber

The door to the trap is open. It’s always been open.

This is what it feels like: the pinch and press of it, the sharp snap of teeth over a limb. Mousetraps, bottle traps, box traps, bodygrips. A Saw trap, riddles and keys and blood, panic, mental anguish. Tear yourself apart to live; what is a pound of flesh, what are fingernails, what is another bruise, another scratch, another bruise, another bruise, another –

This is what it feels like: a disappearing act, carnival smoke in your hair, rugburn on your hands and knees from hiding in back panels, beneath trap doors. Being sent into the ether in a puff of pink smoke is nothing; magicians make their assistants vanish all the time. Why bother with the reflection in the funhouse mirror if you can’t recognize yourself?

This is what it feels like: a wave crashing against a rock, an insect caught in amber. Erosion, acceptance. You can get used to anything after enough time. She has been in the trap since she was nineteen. The trap can be gentle. The trap can be kind – look how it cradles her boys, how it strokes her hair. Look at the flowers it left blooming in the vase in the kitchen. Look how it cries when she makes herself sick, how it sits across from her in the visitor’s lounge, how carefully it slots the puzzle pieces together on the plastic table.

The door to the trap is open. The door to the trap has always been open.

Her life is the trap. Where else will she go?