The House with No Doors

This is home, they say,
but it feels more like a cage with windows
just big enough to show me
the life I’ll never have.

I come back from work,
dragging my spine like a crime
I committed unknowingly.
Before the door shuts behind me,
the air already smells like blame.

They call themselves my parents—
but love from them feels like glass:
transparent, cold,
and always ready to shatter
if I speak the wrong word
or blink the wrong way.

They build their version of me
like a porcelain puppet,
stringing perfection through my veins,
pulling my limbs with
commands dipped in comparison:
"Why can't you be like them?"
"Why are you never enough?"

I scream in silence—
because what voice do puppets have?

I beg for softness,
but they hand me mirrors
and say, “Look at how broken you are.”
They never ask who broke me.

I try to feel human—
but I’m rewired daily,
a malfunctioning machine
punished for sparks of soul.

They call it love.
But it’s just manipulation in makeup.
They paint their control as care,
and I’m the villain for wanting air.

I want to run—God, I want to run,
but the world outside
is stitched with their shadows.
Even freedom wears their face.

And some nights,
when the silence grows teeth,
I let the thought of death
curl beside me in bed—
not as an end,
but as a way out.

I don't want to die.
I just want to be somewhere
they can’t reach.

Where I can breathe
without apologizing.
Where I can be flawed
without punishment.
Where my scars aren't
evidence against me
but proof I survived them.

But until then,
I live in this house
with no doors,
where escape is a sin,
and staying
is a slow kind of dying.
By -PALAK...