I’ve been forcing myself through a narrow passageway just wide enough for my side-stepping body to squeeze by for as long as I can remember. Each cautious step taken is accompanied by a brave outreached hand searching for an end, a beginning. My hands shake and sweat and quiver each time my muscles extend into the void of the future. The walls haven’t always been as rough as they are now; sometimes they’ve been smoother, sometimes jagged and detrimental. The unforgiving friction scrapes against my weak and fragile lungs deep inside past my skin, flesh and blood. But this pain is visceral and real and I’m euphoric to feel reality raw. I’m anxious for this to be over. I’m ecstatic to slide my hands against these walls while running as fast as my body will allow and find that there’s nothing pushing back against my palms. When mania takes over I run faster than normal, hoping to increase the chance I’ll be free, but mania is like incense. The fire burns out and as I cry out, begging for pity, for mercy, for release, I drudge past the walls as slow as I manage to get out of bed in the morning. I only believe this tube I’m being pushed through is connected to some apparatus with an honest purpose when the walls on either side of me give to the touch with ease and are smooth and lubricated. The capillary action has maybe been manufactured with intent and not just by some tragic accident. But sometimes I desperately just want it to end. I let myself sink into the back of my chest and let my body drag my spirit forward. I’m often a passenger in my own journey forward, a sticky seed being brought where ever the forest creature roams. The lump in my throat is me, it's my essence being forced down into my depths to ease the travel of my flesh forward through the ever tightening alley-way. Sometimes the walls are made of glass. I’ve gotten glimpses of what’s on either side of me. Sometimes I see ravenous people pushing all their weight against the walls, and other times I see crowds of people so tightly clustered that they collectively force the walls closer and closer together. These crowds aren’t paying any mind to me, they are oblivious, and they are seemingly benign. But I know that there’s no fucking difference in the amount of force pushing these walls together which squeeze and scrape my bones together.