A Picture Unknown

The walls are ever changing, morphing into the highest mountains or the lowest tides, but cracked with time and wear, and marked with ridged trails where my fingers run. One day it’s a sunny sky, the next a storm, but mostly it’s dark — and I wish I could give you more description than simply dark, but it is just that, curling in and swallowing itself whole.

You see, my mind is something of a labyrinth, a massive ruin — or maybe creature? Creature may be the better word for it. It creaks, moans, and often distorts when I think I’ve found the correct path. A living, breathing thing that I never understand — and truthfully, it’s impossible to understand something that is always changing, expanding, thinking. It’s even harder to describe this very creature when, even at this moment, builds itself with so many new thoughts and feelings.

But some paths remain the same and I visit them often. Like my childhood memories, blue butterflies that live within a garden of teddy bears. The knowledge I have gained, books lodged in marble stone, able to be pulled when needed. The dead ends where people I once knew stood, grey and misty areas that never see the sun. Not anymore.

But the scariest part is, even though this is my labyrinth, there are other things that reside here. Things I don’t know. Scary things. And when it’s dark — yes, just dark — I can hear their bated breaths in my ear. The scraping of claws against stone, the frenzied steps of their feet, and the lapping of their tongue against parched lips. Those things, oh, they are truly terrifying.

And sometimes they catch me, pin me down, suffocate me with their breaths of rancid lies and torment.

But they never kill me. I never give them that satisfaction. They’re merely creepers — or so I’ve named them — living in darkness. Unwanted guests in my own home.

I know this labyrinth, despite its many twists and turns, cares about me. It allows me to lose them and shines a light in a direction I can only describe as forward.

I wish I could paint to you what I see, the many winding paths, the many doors that lead into its core, and all the roses that bloomed after the storms, but even I do not truly know what I’m looking at — and I don’t think I ever will.