I stared into the eyes of a novel idea. Creep into covers, hide my face within my hands. These hands were given to me by my father and made by mother, clean and soft. Callous and outrageous from years of neglect and wear, these hands can never return to what they were, clean and soft, innocent. Fetal and scared I hug to the corner of the room. My hands have never been this dirty. I can not sleep, they will not let me read. A shift faces me to the ceiling.
Fluorescent off, incandescent on. Momentary blackness when they switch between. My gatekeepers never turn them off. Only a bright light to the right and a less bright light to the left. At night, there are no windows, moonlight is not allowed to visit. Only the glow of the less bright light is permitted. They cadge the light. Cracked paint creates a vista on the ceiling. Mountains of peeling paint among valleys scratched concrete. Bright mountains and deep black shadows. I am reminded of home, as seen from the sky at sunset. Starting from the door I see another shape. Wide shoulders curve in to make a neck then push away only to meet at the opposite end of the ceiling again to form the shape of a human head. It can be any head but the head I see is my own. I no longer see home. I see my contents of my mind within my ceilinghead. My minds eye projects and constructs solid shapes within the boarders of my ceilinghead and gives light to my darkness thoughts. I see shapes of fear in the static. I see schizophrenia. I see my head slowly pushed into concrete until it and I become one. I see the lost of the finest years of my life. I see the long scars of a solution.
At the center of my ceiling head are the cadged lights. One off, one on. I narrow my eyes to slits and the light transforms. No longer a sun but a quiver of spears. My eyes water before it. The light at the center of my ceilinghead is hope, the light of hope. Sometimes it shines bright, sometimes it shines less, but if you focus and narrow your eyes it is always a quiver of spears.
I look to the left wall. It is vacuous but for only a number, 36. The less bright light casts a shadow on the wall. The shadow cast is of cadge that surrounds the less bright light. The shadow becomes an image on the vacuous wall. It looks like a deep cadged room, black iron bars that run deep into my perspective.
The room is a room, but I am not allowed to leave. It has a door, but it is locked. I do not have the key. I am just a person in prison. I am in a cell with bars made of shadow. Inside the shadow cell is a shape. It is the shadow of the bright light turned off, cast by less bright light of hope. The bright light’s glass and it’s filament withing cast a recognizable shape in it’s shadow, doubt. That shape is me, in this cell, now. Even hope has it’s doubts.