• I wake up to periwinkle sky and coweb ceiling, an odd half and half above my head I ought to be used to but am not.
    Roll over and squeeze shut eyes that have been shut far too long- they simply glide open again.
    With a sigh, I know I have to stand. But lying here in this room I found feels too good.
    Motivation slides through my lazily outstretched fingers like the insects that crawl over me as if I'm not even here.
    But that's okay. At least I'm not stopping them. They know where they're going.
    My cheek against the warped old hardwood is a chillingly pleasant sensation, and breathing in the earth takes my mind somewhere else I'd rather be.

    Sitting at the foot of a low sloped hill, eyes distant and fingers steepled at my chin, I'm 'in a better place'.
    Dashing full speed through sickeningly thick brush, blood and sweat trickling along my bare arms, anything is better than The Room.
    Sand dune drifting through old parking lots, losing mass like I'm losing significance. I'm joined in the twilight by a streetlight over my head.
    As I slide down to the curb, my eyes trace patterns in the uneven asphalt, and the bulb's speaking to me in disjointed flickers of sentences and broken phrases.
    The buzz means nothing to me, background noise that can be blocked out just like everything else threatening the monotony of my everyday.

    It could be a long time, or it could be a little while, but I feel the fade above me before I see it.
    Crane my head back just in time for the light to deem me unsociable, then blink as if it had any right to do so.
    Fireflies flit and I sit and my brows furrow in deep, deep thought. Wasn't this what I had come from?
    Or was it?
    Is this what I've always wanted? Beaten up shoes with holes in the soles and my life lived out of my heart?
    Eventually, I slump backward, landing not in soft green grass, but on warped, earthen old hardwood.
    Realization hits me slow, slow, slowly, and for the first time in a long time, my cloudy eyes open.

    My joints crack, but I climb to my feet, stretching my arms above my head. Ribs can be seen, but that's no matter.
    I brush debris out of my hair, and off of my now-faded jeans. how long it has been doesn't even occur to me, because there, in the doorway, stands another searching soul with skeleton eyes.
    Mine look away. The Room is cruel, but that's no matter. A thousand others ahve done it before me, and more wll make it out after this tired one.