• Stuck, trapped, and imprisoned he was in a rut of no inspiration, no muse to fuel his creativity, nor even a song to sing his way to the light. Nothing but the hapless woe of a lost shard in his heart, leaving his innards in shades of murky blue, black, and purple, as though his emotions were bruised and he could only express it that way.
    He pressed himself to his window, which was cloudy from city smog and dust. His palms and fingers tingled at the stark coldness of the glass; though his chest was also pushed to it, he leaned his head back. He was close enough to breathe fog on the window, or to even kiss it and leave a conspicuously embarrassing mark for the neighbors to see.
    He was surrounded by the walls of his studio, small and cramped, with nearly every inch of the room victim to being covered, taped, and tacked with doodles, detailed renderings, photos, newspaper clippings, and even pictures he had printed from the internet for inspiration. But that wasn’t enough, He felt like a mute, a being who had lost connection to the world, unseen, unheard, unfelt. He felt as though he was behind an unbreakable glass wall, trying to smash his way through, screaming and flailing behind it, but unable to capture his desire’s attention.
    It must’ve been a hallucination; he saw someone, saw her, floating above the tall city buildings, above the blindingly fast activities of the world, among the clouds being blown and slowly morphing and drifting away. She was a lone figure, sitting upon a miniature pirate ship as though it were a toddler’s chair she could barely fit in. Over the cityscape, her posture was slouched, looking as though she was interested in nothing more than what was in her lap. The breeze pulled at strands of her long ebony-blue hair, which were stick-straight and smooth as a yard of silk. They gracefully curved in the air, and her flounced skirt also played with the breeze, brushing against her legs.
    She saw nothing; she felt nothing; nothing that occurred in reality was poking through the walls of her mental state. She was dazed, looking only within herself, a forlorn expression merged upon her facade. Her innards felt like nothing more than sickened wounds that slowly bled within, nothing more than murky shades of blue, black, and purple, as though she could no longer express anything save through bruises. Her pin-straight hair flickered upon her face, but they were nothing more than the cold temperature pervading the air around her. There was nothing in the world but for the deep, hollow zone where discarded beats of a thumping heart lay inside.
    Though the window wasn’t open, there was a small breeze tugging at his hair: long dark curls that had been impatiently yanked back and tied, with tousled strands that had rebelliously fallen and framed his face. Thick clusters of the spiraled tresses fluttered against his neck and about his shoulders; he couldn’t feel them. His senses were only upon what he saw before him. He felt as though he were thrashing within his mind, the cage that was his body. She was upon her little pirate ship, disconnected, lost, and asleep in her labyrinthine mind.