Patrick G. Roland
BOUND
I submitted myself for judgment
and pulled out crochet needles,
spun a straitjacket so tight
my lungs moaned.
I claimed I was the maker
of my own sentence,
but only in a whisper.
Wrapping. Wriggling.
Confidence like silk
tight against body-slick sweat.
I vanished.
Inside, I held beauty.
Outside, they saw only
pinned patterns, fractured glass.
I melted doubt into stew
and swallowed it—
thick, metallic, inevitable.
I waited, breath held,
with no instructions
for surviving quiet.
When I pulled the last loop,
it moved without me,
loosening a seam
until breath itself became a pattern.
Knowledge slipped in
between breath and becoming,
unraveling
what I believed myself to be.