I am victim of a lion. I am bait sunk in sea. I have fought and have failed and have suffered. I am trapped in a room with a brittle grenade that threatens to destroy the fiber of my being if I so much as speak or stare.

So I don’t.

“Your words wound me deeply but your silence hurts even more.” He places a hand on my shoulder, his fingernails digging into the crevices of my skin. His fickle words hold as much meaning as the tears of a crocodile before it consumes its prey.

My mouth is tied shut only by the strength of my own will. The cracks of cement on the jaded floor beneath my feet entrance me like a deer in headlights.

“Look at me.”

I try to pretend he isn’t there. He is a figment of fiction, an illusion of the mind.

Both of his hands grip me now.

“Look. At. Me.” He drags each word of the sentence until they near loose their meaning. Silence floats through the air as he awaits my response.

His soul and heart are rotted and dead, but his anger is not. It is alive, and it is loud. It echoes off every surface until my mind pounds from the force of it.

I can’t relent.

I won’t relent.

I don’t.

“Look at me! Look at me, dammit! You don’t want to know what I’ll do to you if you don’t stop this idiotic act of yours!”

He’s shaking me now.

If he stopped I’m not sure I would. I’m not sure I ever will.

My resolve shatters. Hidden tears poor into puddles at my feet, and I crumble down to the floor. My screams and sobs consume me until I no longer recognize the woman who produces the shrill noise.

The hard hands on the blades of my shoulders turn to comforting rubs and a silky smooth voice. “Love, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he says. The wolf is back in sheep’s clothing.

I am so broken I cannot find it in myself to care.

The mirage is sweet, sweet cheese.

And I am a mouse in a cage.

I am victim of a lion.

I am bait sunk in sea.

As I’m always bound to be.

So long as the cycle repeats.