It looked like forever since he had gotten out of the confinement of his bed... He tried to reach out for the iron bars on the nearby window as he tried to stand up... Age had not yet begun destroying him, but he'd started feeling old already... He couldn't remember how long he'd been in there... His trembling hands held on to the iron bars as he slowly rose to his feet... Mist had covered the entire window... All he could see were blurry colors moving about in the outside world... Everything was cloudy, just like his mind... It had always been cloudy, ever since he'd entered that place... A few droplets raced downward from the top of the window, creating a clear trail behind it as it moved... He tried to look through those trails at the world outside... It looked different... Things had changed... Everything had changed ever since he'd entered that place... He tried to move closer to the window, hoping to understand more clearly... But the chains snapped to his legs reminded him of his limits... He had never understood why he was bound... He couldn't remember for how long he'd been living in confinement... He'd been living this way - a life bound by limits, for what seemed like forever... His eyes filled up with tears, his vision blurred... He looked longingly through the clear trails in the window... It looked like
her... In the garden, in the distance... She was picking flowers... Did she look happy?... He didn't know... People like him can't see or think straight... A teardrop flowed down his cheeks as he sat back on his bed, given up on life... He didn't know how much longer he'd have to be in there...
She looked at the mist that was hanging low over the garden... It looked like the sky itself had descended... She looked down at the frail, multicolored flowers at her feet... They looked like they deserved to die... She plucked a bright yellow flower and held it in her hand as she continued on with her stroll... She lifted the flower up to her nostril to feel its fragrance, but she hadn't realized that her senses were immune to any sort of feelings... She immediately crushed the flower and tossed it onto the wet mud... Rejection... That was what crossed her mind at that very instant as she looked at the flower... The bright and beautiful yellow flower had turned pale brown as it lay there, unwanted... These thoughts made her look up at the building in front of her... It was littered with windows... Windows everywhere... And at each window, there was a man... Each a master of his own misery... Some of them in tears, some of them not knowing where they were, and some of them happy to be on that side of the window... Yet, all of them were in chains... And they couldn't see or think straight...
'This is just the beginning, I am not done yet,' she thought to herself.
