Around me, they dance. Mockingly.

In swirls of color, they cover me in this senseless dance that I wish would make sense—that I wish I was in on their secret that evades my desperate grasp. It’s secret, and it’s the wind, and it’s all from Mother Earth, and it’s all around me.

My concrete hands are unable, unwilling, unhelpful; they barricade me in tormenting cement that crushes hope and chews me over and over again as if to scream to me that I am stuck even when my mind is sharp and my breathing is steady. I’ve never been one to lend credence at first shout to a belief, and the belief that I am stuck is one that I deny the verity of despite my smothering entrapment encasing that truth around me with the sun filters in through the molded cracks and when the moonshine brings utter darkness.

And maybe I’m stubborn, but for how much longer will that survive when my fingernails bleed against the dark stone interior of my statue—of myself? The chipped nail polish I adorn myself with as a trophy is faded, no longer even a nail to stand upon as I have turned my hands into shovels against the impenetrable concrete fate.

My encasing is choking, and the world outside me puts its hand around my neck as the final measure. It’s beauty is tantalizingly so. I am enamored with it, yet I cannot reach it; I understand Juliet now. I, too, would do anything for the world’s love once again—for the leaves the fall upon me again in a divine haze of burgundy and crumbling green. This very desire dries my cement hard.

Mother Earth kisses my punishment as if to say that I am better off here—away, alone, ashamed. Stuck.

Stuck, stuck, stuck. I etch it into my palms with the tired nubs of my fingers, a testament to the will that has passed far beyond the realm my reverent resurrections can reach. My attempt to convince myself to stop, to accept this statue for it’s entrapping beauty and to give up on what I believe is out there, is futile. Failed.

The leaves mock me still; they sit upon my peppered head, upon the concrete dome above me, like a colorful costume. And that’s what it is. Earth’s beauty is playing dress-up with me. The beauty, the hope, the chance—it’s all pretend for me, and for her, it’s a game.

I take my nails to the cement to see them burn. I peel my eyes off the shadows to see the light. I take my teeth to the statue to hear it weep.

In return, I hear myself sob into the abyss—a forgotten statue that even Mother Earth will not save.