I watch the same video,
over and over again
to calm the static within me.
The constant sound of overlapping stations
washes over me and I am choked.
Desperate gasps for air echo in my body,
I click play on the video,
the words appear in my mind before he says them,
each sentence strategically grounding me.
I have entered the bubble where the noises can’t reach.
I am protected.
I can breathe.
The man in the video makes me smile;
His goofy nature calms the sharp pangs of my mind.
And so I sit and watch, contentedly.
The voices don’t overlap anymore.
Not in this bubble.

But now,
Now the thoughts pierce.
One by one,
they dissect every memory I own,
looking for weak points.
And they strike.
I look to the video for aid,
but it’s no use
The same words that once comforted me,
bounce off my eardrums with ease.
My eyes cross.
My lips are cracked.
And there is blood on my nails.
I want to leave the bubble,
I push and claw,
but its flimsy shell has hardened.
And I am trapped.
The carefully wrought attacks emanate from my conscious,
and reverberate against the cold, hard shell.
They bounce from wall to wall.
I can feel their jaded edges cut against my mind.
The thud each attack makes,
as it reaches the outer edge of my prison.

Time passes by.
Days.
Weeks.
Months.
I do not know.

At the floor of the bubble, lies a gelatinous corpse.
Its eyes red and puffy, cheeks stained with sorrow.
But there is no use in crying anymore.
The lifeless body has already heard every mental assault thrown its way.
Those repeated lines of letters lose all meaning,
as the body accepts them to be true.
It no longer fights what they have to say.
All it can do
Is sit and exist.
Breathe and sleep.
Stare and hope to forget.

The breathing corpse yearns for the static to return.
The converging channels could reanimate the body;
they could pause the process of decay.
Wind whistles through the hollowed out suit of muscle,
and occasionally,
A shock is felt.
The body jerks synchronously,
but the weight of the words dampens the signal.
The static tries again, louder.
The body listens for a second more.
So the static persists.
Each time, finding ways to crawl underneath the chainmail of words.
Until one day

The girl rises.