By: Ashley Olson

Sophomore, Brodhead High School

What is this?

This emptiness.

I feel like a shell of what I used to be.

Is the face in the mirror even me?

Is the song I used to sing really gone?

How could you have changed me so much?

I used to love,

I used to laugh,

Now I just look back and know,

That the pain that's filling me up is your fault.

Even the pain is leaving though,

I feel numb.

Cold is settling in my soul,

I feel that soon I shall freeze.

I sit in my castle and stare out,

Where did the world go?

How could I let all this slip away?

... Maybe,

Just maybe if you saw my pain,

My nothing,

You would storm the castle gates,

Like you did so long ago.

Now though the walls are thicker and stronger,

I'm hidden even deeper in my mind then I have ever been.

Only thing left is to stare out these tainted walls,

To the silver lake you live by.

Water so clean surely only you could have cleaned these walls,

Back to their shimmering gold.

But no you added to the dirt the rust,

My castle shall soon be dust.