The springs groan and the backboard sounds a sharp crack under my weight.
It’s been doing that ever since some friends and I used it
As a trampoline on my eleventh birthday.

I slouch in the middle of my safe haven and look at my life decorated on the red walls.
I marvel at all of the roses I’ve ever received hanging upside-down along my ceiling.
My favorite is the dyed-blue bouquet that my dad gave to me years ago “just cause”.
Sometimes their dried, cracked petals fall to my floor, but I save those, too.

I notice the posters that have tattooed my walls since I was a kid,
An old James Dean portrait, Abbey Road, and Kissing the War Goodbye.
There’s my record player sitting underneath Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors,
One of the many vinyls my grandpa had given to me growing up.
Over there is my massive bookcase, holding well over two hundred stories.
I scan their spines until my eyes spot my two favorite books,
In Memoriam by Tennyson and Stephen King’s novella, The Body.

This is where I go when I need time to think or when I just want to be alone, safe.

But then I look behind me at the black cityscape my uncle painted on my wall
Just a few months before he hung himself.
I remember the hole in the wall hidden behind my door
That I made with my fist the night I first told my mom I hated her.
Above my record player is the last picture of my sister and me before I lost her
And scattered across the floor are the many journals that hold my darkest thoughts.

This place is me.
It is my Heaven, my haven, and my Hell.