Delusion is my dearest friend.

Delusion is my cruelest foe.

I wear it like a suit of steel—

shiny, cracked, a fragile glow.

It guards me from the jagged truths,

too sharp to hold, too raw to know,

but locks me in a silent room

where doors forget which way to go.

Inside, the echo keeps me close,

my voice returns not quite my own.

I trust the shadows more than light,

and waltz with lies I’ve always known.

At times I fear I’d fall apart

if delusion slipped away—

it holds my scattered, trembling pieces

in a castle made of clay.

But sometimes it begins to drown me,

each falsehood tightening its thread,

and with each lie it softly whispers,

I become a little less than I’ve been.

Still, I wear it every morning,

for reality is bare and cold—

yet delusion wraps around me

like a lover I can hold.

Now I tell myself he means no harm.

Now I say each look’s a trick of light.

But I am wrong—and I can feel it

deep beneath the veil of night.

I hear it in the quiet spaces

when his words no longer fill the air,

in how he speaks my name so slowly,

like tasting something he might tear.

The nights have stretched, the dark grown braver,

I turn the key once, then again.

But even locks begin to falter

when danger wears a trusted name.

In the glass, my eyes are strangers—

wide with doubt, and rimmed with fear.

He follows not with steps, but silence,

his thoughts like hands that linger near.

Yet I am not an empty vessel.

Not just armor, not just ache.

A flicker lives beneath the silence,

a part of me that will not break.

One day, I’ll shed this gleaming prison,

let the cold wind touch my skin,

and still I’ll stand—unmasked, unshaken—

a truer battle to begin.

For past the echo, past the shadow,

past the fear I’ve come to know,

lives a voice that still remembers

how to rise, and how to grow.

And when I find her, fierce and steady,

I won’t need delusion’s art—

for I will walk, full in my being,

with nothing false to guard my heart.