I think I’ve gone insane. I live among angry little people.
They scream in gestures, smile with their teeth, and prod me like I’m a monkey in a zoo enclosure.
They take turns agitating me—sometimes with words, sometimes with silence.
And it works.

For a while, I pretend I’m above it all.
I tell myself I’m the evolved one. The bigger person.
But then I catch my reflection, and I see it too—I’m just another angry little man.

The difference is: I can’t leave.

They like me here. They need me.
Not in any useful sense—more like a mirror they can shatter when their own faces become unbearable.
I serve a purpose. I remind them who they are, and who they are not.
That comforts them.

Now and then, they open the gate.
If I don their attire, speak their tongue, compress my real self into the folds of my ribs where no one can find it, they let me out.
Temporarily.

They greet me with cautious smiles, as long as I maintain the illusion.
But I must be careful—there is always a watchful eye.
They test my edges, probe for leaks.
They want to know if the costume has fused with the skin, or if the original self still pulses underneath.
One wrong verb. One unsanctioned gesture.
One glimpse of anything that doesn’t fit the shifting shape of their fabricated culture—And I’m thrown back in. No warning. No trial.
Just the same grinning faces, proud to have put me back in my place.

The guards come sometimes. My alleged saviors.
They parade around, drag off a child who throws a bruised fruit at my head—
But the sticks, the ones lodged beneath my skin,
They remain.
They always remain.

I know I’ll never be one of them.
They know it too.
But this isn’t a misunderstanding.
It’s a ritual.

Someone has to stay in the cage,
so the others can believe they’re free.