Ceilings

You know that feeling where your surroundings have become so comfortable they’re almost uncomfortable? Like you know every detail of the walls and trees surrounding you and you’re content but restless at the same time.  And all you do is look at the ceilings that have become so suffocating.

I feel like the longer I stay in places, the more likely I am to let them cage me. So it makes me wonder if I am my own keeper.  Do I lock myself up? Knowing where the keys are but not actually allowing myself to be free of the shit show in my own heart and body? Feeling so trapped in sensations, hands.  Am I my own cage?

I wish my feet would carry me like wings so I knew what it’d feel like to be weightless.  For the wind to whip everything back. So I could feel safe.

When I’m not looking up at the sky I’m looking at a ceiling.  They’re so mesmerizing to me. They hold my attention for hours, laying on my back staring at the cracks and crevices in the tops of a building. Ceilings were my friend but also my enemy for so many years.  They allowed me to feel powerful but so very small. A taunting but daring idea at the same time. “Come be with us” the bumps whispered. And I wanted to. But I had no way of getting to the ceiling. I had no way of moving from the ground up.  So I sat and started. Laid and stared. Stood and stared. Whatever they wanted. But once I was able to get outside, stare and gaze, mesmerize at the leaves and trees, my eyes grew green. The surroundings were more than just surroundings. There was air, breath, newness, life. There was more than just a taunting ceiling.

The ceiling has heard a lot of my reflected screams, moans, cries, yelps, throughout my years and I feel bad for what it has seen and heard.  Like a young child with stolen innocence, I wish I could plug it’s ears and cover its eyes. Wish it could unknow what it knows. But ceilings are ceilings and they trapped me there, suffocated me.  Taunted me with tongues out, like little kids on a playground, teasing one another “betcha can’t make it”. And I couldn’t. I never could escape until it was over. Until they finished what they wanted to do with my body.  Never looking towards the ceiling, never caring about the walls, or me in general. Only seeing themselves as bodies. Mashed bodies with a conveniently placed other, in a bed, on the ground, in a tub. However they wanted. And the ceiling just let me speak.  It always let me speak. But that’s the thing about people who only listen, they’re just walls.