I am going mad.
Not slowly. Not poetically.
Mad like a lightbulb popping
in a room with no windows.
Mad like a clock that only ticks
when no one is listening.
There is no reason.
That’s the worst part.
No story to point to and say there.
It’s just heat.
In my hands, in the back of my eyes.
A fever with no infection.
A scream with no throat.
I threw everything across the room
because the air was too still.
Because my skin was too tight.
The quiet was lying to me and I needed
to hear something break to know I was real.
The sound was the only thing that made sense.
The mess,
the only thing that looks like how I feel.
It isn’t sadness nor grief.
It’s noise.
White, hot, static noise blasting from the speakers.
My hands won’t stop shaking
Not from fear. From too much.
Too much space inside my body.
Too much electricity
with nowhere to ground.
I am a live wire in a flooded room.
There is no one here to cut the power
and make it mean something.
I want to peel my skin off.
To get out of this head that won’t shut up
without saying anything.
Escape from this chest that is a drum
for a song no one wrote.
I’m going mad and I’m watching it happen.
Lucid. Here. And there is no one to tell.
I see my hands,
the lamp on the floor,
the clothes strewn across the room.
I know it’s me. I know I did it.
And I would do it again
because for five seconds,
the breaking was quieter than the noise.
The outside matched the inside.
And that was relief.
Don’t tell me to breathe.
Don’t tell me that this will pass,
or that I’m strong.
I need the world to stop lying about it,
to stop giving it a name that makes it smaller.
This is mine.
This is me. Unreasonable.
And for right now,
it’s the truest thing I’ve ever been.
I didn’t clean it up.
The lamp is still on its side.
The books are still open, spines split,
pages drinking the carpet.
Glass scattered, catching light.
The dent in the drywall,
a mouth that won’t close.
I’m still on the floor with it.
Barefoot.
I’m not done being loud.
I’m not done needing the room
to look like what it feels like inside my head.
They tell you to count,
to put it back where it belongs,
but what if the floor is the only honest place left?
What if picking it up is the real lie?
The mess is the first thing that ever told me the truth.
The dent is proof that I exist and I can leave marks.
That I can be too much and still be in the room.
I’m tired of making it disappear
and sweeping my rage under the rug
so the floor looks nice for people who never stay.
I’m tired of apologizing to the walls for shaking.
So it stays.
The room agrees with me now.
There is no before and after.
Just this…
the sound, the sight,
the smell of dust and heat.
I didn’t clean it up because for once,
I didn’t abandon myself to make the room comfortable.
I let the madness have a chair.
I let it sit at the table.
And if someone walks in, they see it.
They decide if they can stand
in a room that tells the truth.
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