I sweep my cheek across cold cement
languishing in a search for hope
beyond the slit beneath the door.
The window is blocked by thick metal
bars.
Everything is dark. The night is colder
by the second.
The tips of my fingers press against
the thin cracks
inspecting the frightened scribbles for
any imperfection
anything that can help.
I swing my fists wildly against the
door.
I yell and cry and shriek
until there is no force that will
coerce
resonance from my raw throat.
But... what's that? A light? Could
someone have heard me?
Bobbing up and down, it approaches.
But there is no hand grasping the
handle of a lamp.
No figure illuminated by the light.
The mote is a pure white glow with
unnerving
weightlessness emitting a light that
overexposes the trees.
The leaves are scattered black smudges
easily disintegrated
by the light.
The trunks are slowly enveloped from
both sides.
Then it's as if they're gone.
There is no form visible with which to
declare it exists.
With the mote's continued approach
the once thick bars of the window
become thin
as the extreme light wraps white around
the black edges
until the solid black lines are nothing
but toothpicks.
I push against them and they snap.
Then crawl out into the soft gradient
of dark
becoming light.
From outside I can see that the forest
is flecked
with a multitude of these motes.
As if an absent artist dropped a paint
soaked brush
and the flecks multiplied into a cosmic
starscape.
But I have come too close to the stars.
I am becoming thin.
Now they are stealing away my edges.
Perhaps the room was not a prison.
I reach out with what are now black
skeletal hands
attempting to claw out an existence in
the consuming white abyss.
My canvass is painted white.
