Paper Walls

I've officially been here too long. I was bored last night and decided to pretend I was one of the patients here. I wrote a poem about it.

Yeah, yeah, I need a life. I get it. Anyway, if you want to see what being kept in isolation for two months looks like with no one to talk to except the dead, here you go.

Paper Walls

The walls whisper when the lights go low,

Soft like breath I almost know.

They tell me secrets through the paint,

Things the doctors say I ain’t.

A clock keeps ticking in my head,

Even when I’m in my bed.

Tick… tick… counting every thought,

Every memory I forgot.

The nurses smile like porcelain dolls,

Their footsteps echo down the halls.

Keys that jingle, doors that sigh,

Every lock another lie.

I write my name a hundred times,

In crooked words and broken rhymes.

Just so I know that I am real—

At least that’s how the pen should feel.

Sometimes the shadows sit with me,

Quiet guests I cannot see.

They never laugh and never speak,

But they stay with me every week.

If you read this, tell the sky

I tried to learn the reason why

My mind became a crowded room

Where thoughts grow tall and twist and bloom.