speak softly

i saw the tv glow

i knew all at once what i was.
inching every wall and every corner my way, i was forced to look at nothing but 4 mirrors.

and it tore me open.
i held my eyes shut,
affrighted of what lied before me.
like a child before their bike hits the tree.
to see what i always knew to be there,
but it was nothing but innards before.
nothing but an unassuming prop in the backdrop of my suburb.

how could i not see it before?

eventually my muscles gave in.
i could no longer press my eyelashes against my cheeks,
no longer morph my body into blindness.

at first i was paralyzed.
to me there was an inferno before me.
it was a rotten corpse,
a viscerally dressed image-
white death herself.

not unlike mold-infested drywall,
never before peeled back.
spores flung themselves outward,
and i felt nasty.
unclean.

i shut my eyes again.
i repeat the cycle.
open, stare, shut.

i do this until one day i am simply
deprived of bodily autonomy-
i do not get a say in choosing blissful ignorance.
i do not own my nerves, or my atoms anymore.
fate has them now.

now i must do nothing but stare.
now i must meet the cadaver before me,
and have no choice but to accept the maggots that have surely spread to the floor.

open

before me is a screen.
and i feel the glow encase the room-
and,
when i turn my head,
i realize it's been filled with other people.
have they always been there?
have i always just been sat in front of a box?

i vault up and search for a mirror.
i pin my hands against soapstone countertop and look fixedly at the reflection ahead.

there is nothing rotting.

there are no maggots.
there is no inferno.
there is no macabre scene,
no sanguinary carving.

there was just me.

shut.