Prison of the Mind

"Move along, move along, dear!" They force, with stiff pretense on their cold-curled lips, as I stop to peer out of the slats which slice the light into sensibly debased slabs. "You're in your way," they offer ineffectively "and mine." they add in an under tone, finally stating their point. "Don't stop, never stop; your mind will follow," yes, on that dog-leash chain. "It's a perpetual machine," they say ironically, mechanically impinged, "No need for stop to think". My mind too must be unplugged from any source of energy but my own movement, and they thus reach for the shutters (there are no openers here) "Are you finished looking out at the sun?" they ask, as though my response mattered; what I did was pointless, and I must be cut off— "I have prepared myself for the blindness," breathing in the last of the filtered light for the long period of breathless dark. They cannot hear that. "Yes." I answer again, painfully betraying, but in a simple definite lie which is all they can ever grasp. That smirk of certainty returns to their inexpressive lips. The stripes of light then narrow into nothingness across my open lids. My eyes close.