The cot lies flat beneath my spine, the air is dry, the color pale. A red pipe runs a crooked line— it hisses softly without fail.
My skull is tight, a failing drum. A piston coughs, not quite in tune. The light above begins to hum— the ceiling bows like stretched-out dune.
The walls breathe slow beneath their grime. My teeth are ticking in my head. A drip repeats what someone said— in words that almost taste like time.
A shadow climbs the angled steel. The pipe above begins to shake. Its breath is hot enough to feel— or maybe that’s my own mistake.
I try to count my breaths aloud. The numbers don’t return to me. There’s humming in my inner ear— a song I can’t unsee.
The cot is gone. I float in chrome. My thoughts are welded to the wall. A whisper speaks without a mouth. I’m weightless in the sprawl.
This one I used a different rhyme scheme and structure for each stanza, gradually getting more chaotic and introducing slant rhymes to make it feel unsettling the more you read.