My mind is in a dark place, encroaching my nightmares every day. The dark is not quite the oppressive black veil that you can’t escape from. The sort of black so black it distorts light and sound. It’s not quite that. The darkness in my mind comes from the various closets and cabinets I have forgotten about. I have long lost the keys to them, after I sealed them shut. Yet, I now hear knocking on the old doors. Sometimes loud, sometimes soft with splinters echoing down from the farthest reaches of my remodeled halls of memory, over and over again. I feel my way along the walls, to find these lost doors down the hall, blackening by whatever is knocking behind them. The dark on the doors spreads like old mold, slowly creeping when I’m conscious and paying attention. It spreads faster like an infection when I drown myself with poison, dripping from little windows that peer into other worlds. I worry about the unaffected doors of newly built rooms. Touching a blackened door as I wonder what’s behind. It doesn’t quite feel like baggage but it’s holding me back. Some twisted experiment started in plain sight.

Maybe it’s the winter and I wasn’t able to get enough sunshine to disinfect the forgotten spaces of my mind. Not enough movement or activity after I accidentally slipped into the silent sea I built years ago to murder myself in the wake of loss and desperation. I was trying to gather some firewood in preparation for this particular season. I fell sick from that water in the middle of summer, unable to clean house. Perhaps I did not properly clean off the water I brought back into my halls. These little droplets would resonate with the unkempt closets and cabinets behind these forgotten doors – holding the specimens and samples of monsters I slayed and of things broken. I wasn’t sure if they can reawaken and become infectious. Perhaps, what was broken did awaken to come knocking.

I shiver at the thought, because that means the darkness can become oppressive. I loaded up on poison to disinfect them. Little soot monsters engulfing all my halls. Now, I’m not sure if the poison is actually feeding them – if they were indeed the result of an infection from the silent sea. What I need to do, might actually be to find the keys and open the doors to the forgotten spaces. Even clean laundry needs airing out once in a while. Who knows, I might find a new pet in there to tame. I can see the windows open and the curtains flowing with a soft breeze in the afternoon sunlight. Yes, that’s probably a better way to approach things.