Beaten

In the middle of a vast sea, an open ocean. Feelings flowed free in the immensity of it all, so much so that they were lost in its own depths, sank infinitely deep into the abyss, and embedded themselves into the folds of black silk. Shivers tore violently through those who dwelled in it, and she was one of them. She looked up at the sky, as jet and seemingly uninviting as that which surrounded her. A single star twinkled in the distance, flaunting the glory of its emitted perfection. It took up all attention in the canvas of the night sky. She wondered what life could be like outside of the blackness of it all. What it could be like to feel so alive, what it could seem like to shed that rigid shell which shackled her that was transparent to everybody she ever came in contact to but was as opaque as a brick wall to her own self. She was bleeding outside-in, and nobody could stop it, and the brine of the black ocean of her surroundings and everybody in it seemed perhaps serpentine in a sly, cunning manner. As liquid needles,  reality struck, slithering into her already-deep wounds and she did not escape the feeling by screams or cries or asking why but instead she accepted that this was her fate. And without further self-pity she bled perpetually from her rawest flesh that was exposed to the outside world and everything seemed to collapse in on itself all at one time but hope was nowhere to be found in the shape of a person, place, or thing.

Turgid and raw, her chest swelled with unknown and unnatural curiosity.

Safety was not in a person. Safety was not in a place, or a thing, or a being on this earth.