Behind the glass.

She walks where shadows learn to speak,

Through fractured halls and corners bleak.

A thousand eyes behind the glass,

Each whisper louder than the last.

They smile too wide.

They move too slow.

Their mouths don’t match the words they throw.

She sees the strings.

The hidden hand.

The world performs on false command.

Her mother’s voice comes through the phone,

Yet somehow doesn’t sound her own.

It twists through static, bends and bends,

Until she cannot tell where meaning ends.

Her friends wear faces stiff and thin,

Their frozen smiles stretched over skin.

She counts their lies beneath her breath,

Like prayers rehearsed to ward off death.

The doctors say it’s all untrue.

That fear has stained her point of view.

But how can ghosts be make-believe

When mirrors watch and never leave?

She doesn’t eat.

She’s sure it’s laced.

She memorizes every escape.

Maps every route.

Avoids each door.

Checks every lock and checks once more.

By candlelight she writes her name

In notebooks stained with wax and flame.

Page after page,

A desperate plea

To prove she’s still who she used to be.

And when the morning starts to bloom,

She pulls the curtains through the room.

The sunlight reaches for her face.

She turns away.

It leaves no trace.

They promised help.

They promised care.

But most days no one made it there.

Just bottles lined beside the bed,

And thoughts too loud inside her head.

Then one day silence filled the space

Where fear had lived and left its trace.

The notebooks closed.

The candles dim.

The voices finally stopped for her.

Weeks later,

Tucked between the pages

No one thought to read,

They found a single line:

“I was fighting a war

you could never see.”