Leanne Machado

They gave me this room knowing it would be my demise. The door opens to me whenever I return. Even if I don’t have the key in hand, the door will open. So, I’ve thrown the key away. And yet, every day it still opens for me, even when I don’t want it to. 

No one else is allowed in. Oppressive fumes escape through the cracks, keeping others away. I found this charming at first, a personal sanctuary that chose me, until I learned that the room was trying to kill me. 

Everyday it gets smaller. I didn’t notice in the first month. Walls I could dodge blindly have begun to collide into my arms, my shoulders, leaving waves of pain and bruises. The room has become muggy and humid in its decreasing size. I choke on my own depressive scent, wet food scraps soaking in the steel sink, trash that won’t leave my room. Even if I do leave the room, it follows me. I see it when I turn a bricked corner, when the rain tickles my scalp, when I fall and lose some skin on the rough ground. It’s been haunting me in my sleep, taking away the paradise of my dreams until I wake up—fallen from my bed because the walls scrunched, pushing me to the hard floor. 

I’ve tried what I can to avoid the room. If I sleep somewhere else, somewhere far, I wake up in my sweaty sheets. Pulled back to my shrinking cage, to my oubliette. What happens when your home is no longer safe? When you realize the room doesn’t belong to you, but the room owns you? When you can no longer escape from your own personal escape from the world?

I’ve returned to my room. I’ve given up trying to avoid it. The walls have shrunk to nothing more than a box, where my arms and fingers extended can scrape the plaster. I will be crushed inside the room that chose me, and there is nothing more I can do but welcome the penalizing embrace. 

A hug from the walls is better than nothing.