A Most Grim Account of the Room That Feedeth Still
I try to speak the way everyone else does, slowly and calmly, as if nothing inside me is too heavy to hold. I talk about ordinary things like the weather, music, and what someone did with their day. I keep the rest of my thoughts behind my teeth because they are not the kind of things people wait around to hear.
People sit with me for a while and they laugh at the right moments. They nod as if they understand something important. Sometimes they touch my arm for a second, the way people do when they want to seem close to you.
Then something shifts in a way that is almost too small to notice. Their attention drifts somewhere else in the room. Their voice becomes softer and more careful. Their body begins leaning away from mine without meaning to.
Soon they remember somewhere else they need to be.
They leave kindly and the door closes in a quiet and polite way behind them. I stay where I am for a long time after that, not moving very much and not thinking very loudly. The room does not leave with them.
The chair accepts my weight again and it holds me the same way it always has. It recognizes the way my shoulders fall when I sit down. It has learned the shape of that silence very well.
The mirror watches from the wall and it never looks confused about what it sees. I step in front of it sometimes and it waits without impatience. It already knows I will come closer eventually.
The phone rests beside my hand without making a sound. It watches my fingers type long messages that grow slowly across the screen. It watches those same fingers erase every word until the screen is empty again.
The walls listen carefully while I think out loud. They collect the sentences that never quite make it out of my mouth. They keep them somewhere I cannot reach.
The door does its work patiently. It opens for people who arrive and it opens again for people who decide to go. It does not argue with either choice.
After everyone leaves, the room still feels occupied.
The chair holds me a little tighter than before. The mirror keeps my face directly in front of it as if it does not want to lose sight of me. The walls lean inward in the quietest possible way.
They handle me gently because they understand how a person breaks. They know how much pressure a mind can carry before something inside it begins to split.
They have had plenty of time to study it.
People visit and disappear before they learn very much about me. The things in this room do not have that problem because they remain exactly where they are.
They are patient observers.
They know that one day something inside me will finally give way.
They are already waiting to see how it happens.