White walls,
No windows,
Perfect square,
Rough carpet,
Same chairs in every room,
That trademark color,
Not green,
Not grey,
But some unfortunate color in between,
Like someone ate grey,
Then washed it down with green,
And someone else opened them up,
And that’s the partially digested color that they found.
Everything gilded in dull alluminum,
Like a poor man’s Klimt,
Cold table legs
And chalkboard trays
And door handles,
Door handles all day long,
I touch the door handles sixteen times a day here,
And I can feel the hands of every sweaty, unwashed drone
That has touched it before me,
That unpolished texture grating against the tips of my fingernails,
The cold,
The vibrations of the grinding hinges,
And the herds of zombies on the other side,
Anyone touching the door,
Making that loud, resonating sound
That moves through to the ******, monotonous handles
And into me.
Linoleum,
All day, every day,
That God forsaken color,
Checkered with white tiles,
Something like white,
But not quite white,
Not nearly as white as the walls,
Speckled with another color,
Like something that would burst out of a caterpillar if you stepped on it,
In an infinite mosaic from hall to hall.
The mood is set on this liminal stage,
By a series of florescent spotlights.
The same light by which we watch the dreary, surreal dreams play in our heads,
It is this light that illuminates my waking nightmare,
The knocks on the nerves behind my eyeballs,
And I hide,
And pretend that no one’s home.
