thin red lines on

cream-colored paper

my walls look

like candy canes

swelled with

hardened sugar.

if only i had

a little more

self control.

i ate the walls,

gorged myself

on the plaster dust

as if it were

powdered sugar,

sucked on the paper

like it was made of

peppermint.

i could not taste

its sweetness,

but i felt it

settling in my gut

slipping down my throat

and pooling

just above the waist.

now my roof

is sagging

and my stomach

is sagging

and i can confirm

horizontal striped wallpaper

is fattening

but not enough

to fill the void

inside my stomach

that seems to stretch down

past my knees.

Are horizontal lines on wallpaper fattening?Yes, yes they are. It is the same with vertical lines on wallpaper being heightening. The true question is, does one want the room to look fat or tall?

That is purely up to personal taste, and in my opinion and taste a fat room is a good room.

You see, fat rooms mean more depth of space to put stuff. Shelves, seats, shiny things, more space for all of it!

And yes, I know that one could put very tall shelves in a tall room. However, it is hard to see the things on the taller part of the shelves. That means I cannot enjoy my stuff, which I may or may not hoard, and thus the tall shelves are useless to me!

Fat rooms mean more places to put things at a more comfortable and convient level for viewing said things. And as a master of having lots (and perhaps to many) stuffs, having more spots to look at the stuff is good.

In short, horizontal stripes on wallpaper do make rooms look fat and I am an enjoyer of fat rooms.

Fattening or flattening?

How can one really say

Eyes dazzled and dizzied

The same story every day

Fattening or flattening?

Or both at the same time

A squabble among gods and men

An illusion truly sublime

Fattening or flattening?

Queries my pinstriped foe

Settling into the wall as I quarrel

Where on earth did they go?

Fattening or flattening?

The pattern laughs in my face

How I wish they'd let me out

And free me of this place

The lady in the yellow wallpaper wanders the perimeter having noticed a recent and unwelcome change in the scenery. The bars of her prison, those which once defined her desperate urge to escape, have been twisted, spun on their axis, and now, looking in the mirror, see notices just how unflattering they are.

When did I get fat? she asks no one in particular. She approaches her unwelcome reflection, a mirror in the corner of the room, hoping to shatter it, to deny any confirmation of her deformity. Reaching out to grasp at its frame, she notices her arms, once tools for rattling her cage have become flabby and soft. She can't reach the mirror, and in desperation she begins picking at the wallpaper, a nervous habit she's picked up during her interminable sentence.

Once, she focused on the bars, ripping holes in them uselessly in a feeble attempt to escape. Now looking at her own form, she pulls at her edges. She defines her waist, smoothes her hips, tears at the piece between her legs where she'd rather sense distance than communion. After a moment of reverie, envisioning a body she wants but will never inhabit, she sees her fingernails stained with crusts of clotted blood.

Old scabs she remembers.

A house, already indeed too big for its plot of land,

contains far too many rooms to make any real use of them.

Built on the rocky edge of a watery, trickley kind of cliffside,

any bigger and it would slough right off the side,

perhaps finally finding contentness at the bottom of the shallow lake.

Children used to throw rocks at the windows,

until all the children grew up and no more were born.

Such is the way around watery, trickley kinds of cliffsides.

And as such, abandoned but for its sulky, sunken owner,

the house, already self-consciously empty, is nearly obsolete.

Inside, a sprawling foyer, dim and dusty, greets not a single soul.

Beyond, the staircases spirals out into four sections:

both above and below ground level, left and right sides.

Upstairs, a hallway stretches longer with each tick of the grandfather clock,

leading to fractals of spare, stale, and unwittingly spacious rooms.

Through an ornate doorframe, its door unhinged but hanging on,

rests the sitting room, possessions coughed about and left as reminders.

Twenty steps further, and there lay a Mr. Cartwright,

needing naught but a roof, bed, and the unavailable doctor,

coughing up blood into his pillowcase, suffocatingly alone.

And circling him, rectangling to be precise,

is the faded yet ostentatious striped wallpaper,

glaring across the room at what once may have been its only friend.

The last thing, in fact, that poor old Cartwright ever lay eyes upon

is the meretricious meticulousness of those dear lines.

Confined to his strictly horizontal position, he, in his last moments:

acknowledges the unparalleled craftsmanship of these parallel lines,

contemplates owning a house of this unprecedented size,

and with his final breath condemns the walls for their infinite lies.

Then, contained by the echoing, expanding, empty house, he dies.