In her mind, it was dark. The lights were off, the curtains drawn; the show had ended long since. There was no light, no inspiration and it was dull. Dark. Various shades of grey and black shrouded her mind like velvet. Delicious in the way she could just let go. Never mind the fact she couldn't write anymore, her artwork a traced scam. She was hollow and most days, she didn't care.

What had made her like this was debatable. A smooth concoction of repetitive telling's of 'you're useless' and 'you'll never get anywhere in life, girlie', mixed with a dangerous dose of poisoned judgement and lack of proper teaching. You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, I tell you. This is how it is done.

Haphazard scratched lettering used to scrawl off the page, filling up blanks in A4 books. Imagined worlds, expanding horizons, absolute originality. It can't, you can't write like that, that's wrong, it's too poetic. Cut her down, tear her up, spit her out, societies shepherds caging her mind like the sheep they wanted her to be.

And it worked, oh, it worked. She fought and she scratched and bit and still she pushed. Alas, her mind died a martyr. The rainbowed ideas were washed out grey.

And all she did now was exist. A shapeless ghost with a memory mirage of what was before. The ideas were like autumn, fleeting. Or an oasis in a desert – tantalising in the way it shimmered.

Forever out of her grasp. A ghost, a memory, a person who lived because she had to.