These walls hear dreams.

As one goes, white noise follows

Into these rooms, and it reverberates

From ceiling to

Corner and corner and

Back again.

Louder, it grows

As notes add on.

In the bare brush of feet

Along this carpet,

In the faint strains

Of this song or another,

In the cracking of these

Sore knuckles,

In the pre-recorded applause

Of late night with

Insert name here,

In the rustle of weight

Shifting and sheets moving,

In the bangs of falling things

And muffled curses from

Hurting others,

In the clicking of a pen

And the jingle of

Keys,

In the rush of a door

Slam shaking the foundation,

In the scraping of a fork 

And drip of 

A leaky faucet,

In the riotous laughter

Outnumbered by the 

Soft pull of tissues

From a box,

Collectively it is the whole of

An existence.

Decipher the static and

All you will hear

Is a life, in these

Small sounds.

I have a roommate

who believes she lives alone

Though I've never made

my presence known to her

She finds comfort in me

and talks to me as if

she knew I was listening

I can feel her staring at me

Sometimes for what

seems like hours

Searching for something

beneath the white paint

If I could only leave this room

I'd go out and find

her the help she needs

I hear it all

The 1 am drunkenness

The 2 am screaming

The 3 am crying

The 4 am pleas

But what I hear the most

is the silence while she

fights the battle within

these walls collect sound

in the plaster,

storing echoes as secrets

that leak out slow

over time like the

dust of tears in the dark

and the lies I tell myself

before giving up on the day,

the strain in my voice,

when I remember words

I wish I'd kept as they

cast a shadow over conscience,

these walls know the ghost

of me, though

I have a hammer, and

the urge to deafen,

a paintbrush and the desire

to suffocate.

Dear Readers:

Watch now, as we listen closely to our reclusive subject reciting her poetry. She is siting two-fisted with her paper and pen, and a glass of wine. She considers her unraveling sanity night after night. As the moon rises, her intellect spins. She is either going mad or perhaps she is slightly touched. She is indeed overwhelmed by her senses fusing. Irregardless, she is different and obsessed with the human condition. She ruminates with manic creativity over the injustices of humanity, but hope lingers nonetheless. She is haunted, but feeds incessantly on such. Her empathy and pain duel, and the outcome is yet to be determined:

These walls have

Metaphorical stones

My personal Veil of Jericho

I am counting in sevens

A separation from

My innate discomforts and

Mainstream society

My synesthesia shouts in shades of grey

And these walls offer

An isolated haven

Found within and

Built for

My emotional protection

To discern my condition

Away from the noise

Confined to myself and

With all triggers removed

My intimate space is

Safe and solitary

Quietly entombing

In body and mind

And I pace within

This is my mausoleum

The flesh of my wit

Accompanied only

By a cacophony of

Voices weeping

[This is not altogether symbolic, but provides some truth to the subject's fear of pending insanity.]

For mercy

In poetic fragments

Inside my brain, and

The Goddess of Eris --

With Phobos and

Deimos, are ready

To protect me

Exposing the two-faced

To the light, but

In the sanctity of my darkness

Fighting demons

On my own behalf

Borne from a brokenness

My vulnerability shattered like glass

Coupled with

The massive weight of

My empathy pulsing

Disproportionate and consuming

My disfigured changeling

And torn between

The fibers of wool

Now swaddling me

With carnal suffocation

[With regard to matters of the heart, you see here: the subject's undoing is taking place in slow motion.]

To the lovers who scalped me,

And harvested my soul:

You left me for dead.

And I can rest

Within these walls

I am able to heal

[Contradictorily, the subject still ends with hope.]

Those white walls of my room know everything. They have heard my sorrowful sobs and my hollow laughter. They have heard me weeping and my agonising yowl. They've heard me scream and writhe in pain. They've not seen it, but they've heard my loneliness when the symphony of silence played louder than the ticking of the old clock. They have heard my anger as it erupted like a dormant volcano, filling the room with incoherent words. They have heard my insanity as my tears suddenly turned into a maniac's laugh.

A laugh that resonated time and again reminding me how I had let my sanity slip away with time.

Yet,

They choose to remain silent, after all I have suffered, they choose not to speak. They've bore the pain of the punches I threw at them, the way my nailed clawed at them, tearing away the white wallpaper away. The way I smeared the thick red blood that seeped out of my wounds. They remained silent when I talked about my frets and twinges. They made me wonder if they were friends who knew that what I was suffering from or foes who were secretly judging my existence.

Soon enough.

I saw ears.

Here and there and everywhere.

I giggled at my madness.

Sometimes when I'm alone at night 

when the space sneaks in between

my brain

turns off

and my mind turns on.

And always, it occurs to me, again.

That the only thing that I know in life to be true - 

Is that THIS reality

and everything that comes with it

has no name

has no number

has no locus

has no bounding box

except the ones that we assign

which are nothing more than memories 

inside the walls of a maker's mind.

On the darkest days these walls would hear my exhausted sighs.

Silence would rip apart the space where my heart has cried.

Madness is my mentor and these walls would surely hear me try.

Talking to myself they hear my lies;

I spend too much time complimenting my lack of sanity filled eyes.

And today scattered on the floor lay my mind.

Within the strokes I’m painting not only to pass time.

Each color -every line the blackness inside unbinds.

If the walls could hear what I’m hearing they’d hear my spirit shrieking.

So I resort to picking up a paint brush and painting.

’Cause when my heart kisses the canvas I’m no longer deteriorating.

Daytime dreaming -you see the darkness is fading.

The walls will tell you they hear my fears receding.

In the canvas my soul is healing.

But surely the walls also see it bleeding.

I am the mighty wall

you created

to shelter you

from Death climbing

baseboards of your existence.

My ears hearken to the words

of your lost soul.

Your scattered torso parts

are exposed

to my hungry naked eyes.

I hear and touch the drippings

of your notoriety, marching

in a formation of butchered

and shanghaied thoughts.

Your rancid flesh is spewed

by wails of debasement

as cruelty sticks

to my walls like Velcro.

You yell to my corners

but I can only rubberneck

as I unlock your filthy codes

with my listening key

and find your secrets.

A sodden liquor flows

from your reservoir,

adding to my burden,

shoring up

your angry thoughts.

You slice truth

like biscuits to my

gaping mouth,

anchored in my walls,

leading to your tomb

where I can no longer

H E A R   Y O U !

our conversation today

made my walls

regret having ears

powerless to intervene

but

forced to listen

today my walls hear doubt

as I recite

your explanations

through my tears

as though somehow

my repeating them

will make them true

today my walls hear vulnerability

ashamed/defeated sobs

once I heard the door shut

usually reserved

for eight walls in total

the four of my bedroom

and the four of my shower

right now my walls hear fear (because it does have a sound)

it’s my wheezing through

a tightened chest

and the sound of my inhaler

as though somehow

asthma is the reason

I can’t breathe

Dear God,

Thank you for this life that I have. Thank you for this beautiful house, and I praise you for the creation of my lovely family and wonderful friends.

I'm sorry to have to ask you about this...

Lord, they're listening!

Now, yesterday, tomorrow they hear.

They hear the music I play, the words I speak in your blessed name, they hear all.

Now, Lord, I wouldn't mind at all if there wasn't a major problem with that. I'm very grateful for this house, after all.

But...

The ears are tripping over the visitors. Whenever people come around, they are first spooked by the colour of the walls. Then they look closer and are terrified by the ears poking out. They'll run and call me a witch, and then the ears move.

They jiggle with laughter.

Lord, the walls are making me lonely. I feel like I can barely say this aloud because they are listening, they are listening.

What if they are watching too?

Are they conspiring to kill me?

Drown me in their earwax?

Lord, I am afraid!

The walls hear all!

Amen

P.S Please hurry.