“Shakidity, shake, shake,” my cold hands always reach out to greet another. My mind goes in and out, it flickers like a lone ceiling light bulb. The moths are drawn to my warmth and they buzz around my psyche’s flame.
“Flicker, flicker,” the room grows dim. The shapes play in the light, or does the light gently sway with the shapes? The moths rest on me. “Don’t go into the light,” I say, “for you are just a bug, and you are about to get fried.” Still their wings hum as they encircle me.
When my mind is calm the room is well lit and I can clearly see into all eight corners.
***
My thoughts are intermittent like the light. They flicker in and out of this dismal room I call my mind. My body heaves as I swallow the pills, flushing them down with water as I lower my gaze. I sit on the edge of my bed with my back arched thinking, “God, will this ever make me better?”
I climb through the journals of my past in this room where I am trapped. I await my tongue to read my release. For months and years the black letters lay scratched on the white paper. They have never been read by anyone but me.
***
I reach out to touch the ceiling light which illuminates this room that I regrettably call life. In a single spark I fall onto the floor. My eyes widen, my jaw loosens, and I ache to breathe the wind that has been knocked out of me.
My skin itches, I scratch inside my veins! My jaw hurts from the clenching and grinding of my teeth as I sleep. The stress radiates throughout me, I shake with a feeling of epilepsy. My temples ache and pulse rhythmically.
With a jolt, I hear a sound. My lungs quiver and my pupils grow large. My hearing is peaked and I can see in more in detail than what I could not see yesterday. I feel like a battered animal who they are trying to cage. My lips lie parted as I pant heavily, ready to flee from the feelings inside. I am acutely aware and ready to pounce, cornered only by myself. My mind becomes so detailed that I think to bash my head into a wall. I pop sleeping pills and chug back alcohol just to dim it down.
***
The room sometimes likes to leave me with my doubts. Everything goes silent, even the moths wings stop. I get scared as the silence hits with the vibration of thunder. I am placed to face my fears, to face the chaos that I’ve built. I stare with open eyes as it approaches. Me scampered to the wall, shoved back as far as I can go. I see water in the distance raging towards me. A raging wave I’ve drawn on the wall. Fearful I’m screaming as my imagination brings it to life. My own thoughts my killers. My back against the wall, plaster flecks building up underneath my fingernails. Scratching and screaming because of the flood that I've drawn on the wall. The scratch marks are the slit scars along my arms.
The wave hits. It smashes against the wall where I cower. I lift my head to the ceiling light to try and breathe as the force penetrates me. My pen tries to scribble, to speak and to write, and for a moment my pen and I collide. For a mere second the moths disappear and the bulb glows with an intense burst of light. My pen changes the storm —It changes my form. It allows the wave to move through me. My pen begins to change the walls, it dislocates the joints of the room and they expand onto a different plain. There is no longer a room with a bulb, there is only light. The light radiates like the sun, beaming life. It radiates so strong that I have to build the walls up to protect myself.
***
When my pen and I collide we change the ways of my mind. I fill up bottles with my writing and I throw them out to sea. Stories that I hope the tides won’t bring back to me. I construct bridges and ships to forge across the brine — An ocean that I’ve drawn on my wall.
My consciousness flickers as the moths hum while the bottles drift out to sea. Please don’t let the writing die here with me.