Shrub roses raspberry and spiderwort
purple by the locked garden gate
once colored rainbow our irises, 
but since my sentence started, 
I find smiling buds distasteful.

I don't want to spit on their blooms,
but dark clouds close in like walls
suffocating my view. 
It’s possible I could let the sunshine in…
through fence picket prison bars.

Tunnel vision was fated by rote memorization.
My body is a train. My body is train. Body is train.
Through the mountainside they carved my way
so I could hurtle full speed to a singular glow
that promised an out from this fence. 

But I never get any closer. Closer, closer, 
closer to a watercolor painting of crutches
climbing trees of (s)age instead of youth.
Acknowledge nostalgia but ignore the sweet bitter
of the timeline his #2 pencil erases in my dusty wake. 

I just want to breathe behind a Band-Aid
holding back the rushing water flood
above this cavern underpass. The land I live in
I long to leave even farther, to be nearer the amber tree.
I can’t turn around. I don’t want to turn around. 

Train, move faster. Release me. Escape me.
No, I mean, help me escape the me I left.
Ignore the trolley problem. Run them all over.
Find me a life, upon the wings of vultures
that stopover in cemeteries (a change of scenery, 

at least). Stop the clock hands of my pulse 
as you speed me beyond this ringed horizon
so I can live my craving before cataracts consume me.

Honorable mention in this contest: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2831193-National-Poetry-Month-April-28th-noguest