Yellow Room
A poem
The bile-yellow room seems to diminish
The more I walk through it.
A compilation of hair and eyes and agony
Become one with the plaster, and I wonder
How many faces are engraved on the walls,
How many voiceless mouths are trying to scream
From beneath the jaundiced tint.
Fleshy eyelids denounce those
Who could not sleep for three nights in a row.
The masks camouflage bitten lips and purple tongues.
Madness adheres to the back of the uvula
Like a malaise you can’t swallow nor throw out.
Even the large maroon vases seem depressed.
The plants seem exhausted, the soil seems suffocating.
There are always plants in places like this.
An attempt to add life, to brighten up the sorrow
But even the plants quit.
Even the flowers are hopeless.
They seem to standardize their own nature,
All the same colour as if coated by a heavy layer of dust and oblivion.
Clockwork movements keep the room going;
Some legs never move, some legs never stop.
Continuous attempts to break the floor and the silence.
I come to realise that movement and life are not connected.
One can still move even while being incredibly dead.
There is also an awful amount of cleaning
As if the illnesses would stick to the floor,
A symptomatic goo staining the linoleum
So they clean and clean and wipe and scream the dirt out
As if clear tiles could resurrect clarity.
One by one the faces are assigned names and rooms.
Upstairs, downstairs; They seem to disappear forever,
Or I just forget what they looked like.
Others enter the same line,
The never-ending line in which I feel stuck and stopped and worse and fine.
This is what we want. A whirling stasis.
One day I will be assigned a name, a room and a way out.
In truth, the back of my eyes wants a way in.
There’s a captivating predictability in here.
The pale, absent colours do not scare, do not interest, do nothing.
There’s no obligation to function, no obligation to wet your eyes open or dry your mouth shut.
The only rule is to listen. Listen to your name and connect
The sound to the muscles on your legs.
Walk feverishly and listen more,
More intently, more aware.
Perhaps even listen to the sound of your own voice,
The tongue stumbling on the teeth;
A list of symptoms you have memorized.
And then leave the place and the fear.
The room busting into contractions to push you,
Reborn,
Against the concrete.
© 2020, Giulia de Gregorio Listo. All Rights Reserved
