I am stuck between four walls. A room with white walls and nothing else.
It resembles what Susan Abul Hawa described in her book ‘A Loveless World‘ and called The Cube, except there’s no shower, there’s no bed, and there are no visitors.
I can see myself in a Western movie, thrown in solitary confinement, where my only friend is a hole in the floor that reeks of sewage.
The walls close in every time I think of escape, and with them my breath shortens and my patience dies.
I am caged, except it’s not a cage like the one Shia Labeouf was lyrically dancing inside of in Sia’s ‘Elastic Heart.’
It resembles a bird cage, except there’s no door that someone can open to drop me some food and water.
I am in the cage, alone, with no one looking at me, my only friend the newspapers that I drop my feces onto.
I cannot see freedom beyond this cage, and so I need to devise a way to live, to survive, within my confinement.
I have withered, dried up and shriveled. Not like a delicate red rose a lover gives to his beloved, nor like the one a little girl gives to her mother.
I am there but not there, like a patient in a medical show, a phantom breath, an occupier with no purpose. A lifeline extended to me, an oxygen mask over my nose, my eyes wide open, as if I am in a catatonic state.
It doesn’t feel like anything. People come and go like ghosts and I am still frozen in time, unable to make a move even if I wanted to. A sculpture.
I blink for help but nothing happens.
I have slipped away.
