They only bring me out when it is cold.

I've been in the dark for months. It is a captivity surrounded by wires, plastic, and glass so shiny that it can cut you with its gleam.

You can tell when it is warm outside—the voices, the laughing. It's stuffy here in the dark. The air and dust are so thick that I feel like I will choke. But then there comes a time when the noise of rain is above, and I know it is coming. There will be noise below and an entry up the stairs. Then I will be lifted, moved, with light splashing across my face. And the air will be cold.

It is not a long journey but I grow quickly cold to my innermost being. But then we're in a new place and there is noise from music and voices. They are celebrating again and they have asked for me.

So now I stand on a precipice. I am frightened. It is a very far way down and this ledge is so small. There is a crackling and sometimes a roaring below me. There is a constant hot wind that curls up over the ledge and strikes me, coming in through the gaps in this flimsiest of houses, of prisons, that contain me. The light shines down on me, on the spot where I stand. For I am now the center of attention.

The door opens. I begin to spin. The music begins to play. How I hate that music. It goes on and on. It never stops. It never will.

I should celebrate these times. I should. But I cannot. I am a slave expected to perform at their mercy. There is no freedom here, despite the change of surrounding. I am always trapped.

And when their celebration is over, my enslavement will continue. Back to the old box of wire and plastic and glass. Te go back into the dark. To go back and wait, again and again and again.