by Jessica Hulsey

 

All I remember from the first twelve hours is

Crying

and bright white lights.
The fluorescent kinds that burn into your pupils
and make your brain feel like it is bleeding
and gnawing away at your skull.
All I could hear were my own screams
wanting desperately to be

Out

but longing to be saved.

Doctors asking questions but not

Listening

to the answers.
White coats
forcing me to disappear into myself,
a place I’m just as frightened to be.
Hollow and wasted,
they showed me my room.

Alone,

I showered among
white walls,
white floors
and those damn fluorescent lights.
I saw a girl in the mirror
with empty eyes.

Scared.

Cleaned of old makeup and tears
but not of my own

Shame,

I am brought through
white hallways
into a
white room
where I am met with a dozen

Stares.

Eyes devoid in a place
that terrifies me
and invites me into its arms.

Faces I’ll always remember
and never see again.
Names that escape my mind
to this day,
but faces that coaxed

Me,

cared for me,
saved me from being dragged

Down

into the darkness of my addiction.

They lived in a
white fortress
that grasped my fears
and made them tangible.
There was a palpable

Darkness

in me that had to be boiled
out of my core
so I could fill our eyes with

Light.

White walls
filled with trepidation
that I must conquer
before I could escape.