Out there flights are landing and people are departing. On an evening I see the air machines descending twenty miles away. 

Out there its Monday morning and a continent of workers rise from their beds to engage in a human creation, civilisation. 

Out there children are lining up, all excitement and anxiety. Teachers, counting down the bells till home. 

Out there my former colleagues are hunting for desks on the open plan floor. Team meetings and phone calls. Mopping up the weekend with keyboard and pen. 

Out there the world keeps turning with the dog walkers and the hung-overs, the shift workers and the amazon drivers. 

Out there the buses are late, or maybe right on time. The politicians continue with their regurgitated bile. 

Out there the dentist begins her first appointment, the librarian unlocks the doors for the ones without broadband and the mums with buggies. 

Life goes on, out there. 

In here, I’ve returned to bed. Sore eyes and weak knees message me that it’s not my day. 

In here the Sunday dishes remain crusty and unwashed. The weekend vanished and I’m not sure if I stepped outside. 

In here I feel like residue. A ghost of myself, kidnapped and incapable. Double socked and disabled. 

In here there’s blessed silence. I’m miles from anywhere. Miles from any emotional or constant landmark. Two miles from the pub. It might as well be a million. 

In here my prison is made of beauty, but it’s still a prison. Sometimes I’m let out on day release to wander like the undead. There but not really, the length of my sentence, unknown. 

In here I’m wrapped in a cloak of invisibility. If I vanished virtually, would I still be me? 

In here I thump on metaphorical walls, lost in my own maze. The world goes on without me. I’m missing from my own heartbeat. A shift in time stole me away. 

In here I wonder if there’s another me, in another dimension, out there, where I was never sent to my beautiful dungeon. He’s just walking around, getting on with life, earning money. 

In here I’m always on my mind.