Paranoid

When you found the room the door was unlocked. The handle had a little steel shell with a padlock threaded through it– because it once seemed appropriate to secure the premises– but the padlock had always been rusted and pathetic, its mechanism unequipped, it couldn't serve its purpose if it tried. 

You entered swiftly, breathing in the open space, it felt fresh unlike the aged lock. There was something light in there, something far from the rest of the house that urged you to stay.

You found a space on the loveseat couch between the two windows and sat down to relax, it had been a long day.  You sunk deep into the memory foam lined cushions, leaving an imprint that would remain for awhile after you stood. A seat was a long time coming, for you.

Some time passed and you kept returning in increasingly long intervals, and the dust in the corners became as familiar as the cushions that aptly remembered your shape each time, but it was time to leave some marks a little more permanent than the slow rising fibers that knew your impression, As they were trained to forget it each time they were reminded.

So you started to add things.

Shelves on the walls– so their plastered flesh could bend at sharp angles to hold your shit, curtains draped heavily on the widely gaping windows—for a little more control over the light, You just wanted to be more comfortable after all, right? Who could blame you? But you also took away other things, throw pillows and largely framed paintings, warm lamps, small tables,  And soon it started to feel smaller in there, it didn’t feel as light anymore, it was too cluttered, too caught up, too tainted.

When you started to feel it closing in on you, you began to put more mirrors in the room,  You had heard that doing that can open a space up,  but then you were seeing yourself all the time and you grew angry toward the mirrors and they’re hanging poise on the walls, so true and unavoidable,  but really you were just angry at your reflections.

And when you later smashed them all to shards and cleaned it up you looked around and though the splinters of glass got swept away and vacuumed a few times over you found yourself the interior decorator of a room that you no longer recognized. You didn’t know where you were anymore—-or you didn’t like where you were anymore and all you wanted was to leave. 

You didn't feel the lightness anymore, you didn’t want to sink into the loveseat, you couldn’t feel the breath of inviting warmth, no more light peeked in through the window,

I wondered if you knew that It was only when you started moving pillows around in the first place that you grew so paranoid