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From the inside it has this sensation of a man
who has been watching a room being built around him.
He has had no part in this construction,
or has at least felt that way.

His hands are at his side with each wall erected.
His words remain behind his lips as they decorate.
Yes, it doesn"t stop with the walls.

Pictures go up, like memores foisted upon the hapless, sidelong observer.
Possessions begin to fill the space.
They are installed by others.
The items are alien and expensive.
He never would have bought them
and barely understands their appliance in to the little room.

So on and so forth.
The room continues to crowd.
Technology is added;

Prosthetic windows and modem roadways out into a socially digitized sphere.
He peers into the electronic pane,
yet never seems to respond to the
unwarmth of the psuedo-sun.

All at once there is an awakening.
Who knows what causes it.
A chip in the glass of a picture frame
bordering an image of a family he doesn"t know?
Maybe the odd glimmer from a trinket
reflecting the annoyance of those bright LCD screens?

Maybe it"s just the realization of dust
collecting and covering the carpet
in a footprint of stagnation.
Whatever it is, it makes the man burn.

For a time, this burning feels like a truth the man discovered on his own,
yet the anger it emulates surprises him into doubt.
The questioning makes way to indignation.
I may be missing a few steps,
but I believe that this is where
the proverbial snake bites its tail.

The fangs pierce down and infect his veins
with a fuel that turns the embers into an inferno.
Maybe he screams.
Maybe he doesn"t.

The only fact that remains is the destruction
that he imparts upon this shell
that has appeared around him.

The pictures he doesn"t recognize.
The windows into the fake world.
The mementos he did not purchase.
This lie constructed to encase him.

It comes down with his years-late acknowledgement.
He wants something more.
Something more than what was wrongfully handed to him.
But how to cross the abyss outside the lie...
How indeed.