a nightmare based on a memory

The room is cold and clinical
With that air of false positives,
Like they tried to lighten it up but they failed.
The lady sits me down,
Tells me she loves my hair,
Likes my shirt,
Thinks I’m pretty.
I’m going to do just fine.
My heart is pumping a million beats per second
And my head has a million different thoughts
And some of them whisper to me.
I can feel my eyes receding into the back of my head because they want to leave as much as I do.
My lungs are collapsing into my rib cage,
No longer deep or medial or superior.
I’m nothing.
I’m two dimensions.
I’m a flat plane because on the outside
She says I’ll do just fine
But I don’t really believe her.
She ties a band around my arm
And I tell her ‘I feel like dying.’
But she doesn’t hear me.
I tell her ‘Stop, I want to get off.’
But she doesn’t listen.
And I say ‘You’re going to kill me.’
But she doesn’t even look.
So I just say ‘It’s a little tight’
And she just says ‘That’s the point.’
‘You’ll do just fine’.
She cleans my arm with a cotton swab
And every inch of my body screams to run,
Because this room is death
And she is poison,
And every minute here is tearing my sanity
Into little bits of paper,
And one more second and I will have nothing
But scraps, littering the bottom of my skull.
The cotton swab is gone and she is checking my veins with her fingers.
My heart is screaming against my chest.
It’s not deep or inferior or willing to listen to reason.
There is here and now and the now is pain.
If I manage to stay here another second
Then I will have fought nature and paid every price.
I took pills.
I took pills to get rid of this,
And what happened to them
And did I give a damn?
Maybe they’re lost somewhere inside me.
Maybe I never really took pills at all.
She tells me to turn away if I’m squeamish,
And I want to turn,
Turn all the way until I’m turning in space
Where there’s nothing,
Not even air.
I don’t see it when it happens but I can feel it,
My fear exploding into three dimensions,
Warm on my skin.
And she apologizes and tries again,
And she splits apart my soul so that it oozes out
Dead.
And from every inch of me screams black green blue white dread fear as loud as it can come,
But I’m going to be fine
And I’m going to be fine
And I’m going to be fine
And I’m going to be fine.
 
I wake up under lights too bright to be heaven,
With the fear of god throbbing through the sides of my arms
And I move my fingers so I can make sure it’s still me,
I’m still here.
I feel my color and I’m as pale as the hospital sheets.
I’m like a ghost, I’m floating,
I’m hollow.
I try not to move
Because I don’t want them to see me.
If I’m very quiet then maybe
I’ll become even paler
Until I’m see-through
Like paper
And they won’t be able to find me anymore.