Clockwork Captive

I wrote this a few months ago, and I can't really take full credit for the image I use. It's taken straight out of a movie called Mirrormask, but it fit what I was trying to say too well to be ignored. It's not a very refined piece since I wrote it all at once. Anyway, take it as it is. The thought is mine, if the image isn't.

Surrounded and covered in so much more than living flesh--
The child that no longer was a child,
A simple and profound beauty, hidden beneath layers,
The childlike trust and stubborn love obscured and suffocated.
How can her living soul breathe beneath the heavy golden mask?

The child, her infant days giving way to full flower of youth
Torn from innocence because of a foolish step
Taken captive to a dark kingdom where she stays
Made an impostor, hypnotized and seduced into deception
And her dark nurses, crooning lullabies,
Making of her a living corpse
And she sits still, in their grip,
Not herself, yet somewhere hidden deep within.

She is no longer recognizable for the carefree maiden
The one that would gather flowers and give strong advice to a coward
She is a slave to the dead kingdom
Like clockwork, everyone moves the same
Glamour is not beauty, but everyone there pretends it is.

Somewhere inside her there is a struggle
Sometimes a glimmer of that little maiden breaks forth
The dead eyes lose their cold glint and come to life
A tear sometimes falls
But the kingdom wants no letting her go

And she is not strong, not is her confidence strong in a savior
Else she might cry out until her voice had gone
Despite the bruises her captors inflict,
Despite the many times she is brought under them again.
But this is a dark battle, and she is wanted here
To stay, like clockwork
A strange compliment to a dim world
Somehow, perhaps, it finds perverse beauty in owning the remnant of innocence.

And she lets go of hope, time and time again, though she had given a cry
Though the savior has pushed his way through the brambles outside
And never stops coming for her at the sound of her voice
But she is captive to a dark spell
And she cannot bring herself to break it--
Cannot bring herself to break the searing and mesmerizing gaze of her clockwork captors.
Is it beautiful?

Perhaps the profundity of their ugliness mimicks beauty
Perhaps the strange light here makes her fear the bold light of the upper kingdom
Perhaps she cannot face the horror of her captivity
But finds it easier to sink back down into painfully sweet hypnosis
For somehow the embrace of despair is less frightening then.

But if she will be free, she must look her captors in the face
Not as clockwork companions, but as monsters
She must hate the monstrous shell they have made around her
That she has come to call herself
She must refuse to be consoled until the savior breaks the throne
And shatters the darkness around her.
The clockwork will fall to pieces,
And she, naked but living, weak but taking in strength, can step forth.

This is a dark battle, fought against a dark lord.
Only life and light can shatter the clockwork darkness of death.