With sullen eyes covered by the delightful glow of the sunset, she looked through the window expecting some inspiration out there, but as the sun appeared, she noticed with disappointment the monotonous calmness of the outside. Not inspired. That black-haired woman with brown and almost scarlet eyes wasn’t inspired at all. Not a single drop of imagination. Apathy. If she wanted to say something, the only thing she would do was to roll her eyes over the livid sky in search of words, but now she didn’t need them to express the feelings she felt so jealously inside. “Apathy”, the doctor said, as she spilled, with no precaution but with an uncontrollable anger, all the ink over the papers. And as days passed, it seemed that no nail could scratch that hollowed heart, and no laugh or tears would come out from that pale face. Statues are alive; they perceive but can’t move or speak. And now she will do nothing, just to sit there or at least that’s what the doctor thinks, but as I suppose, there is not much to say about a silent person.
Nauseous thoughts can’t be pronounced by a weak tongue. Her mind is claustrophobic. This is what I write on my notes every time I observe her manners. I’m not a lawyer, not a scientist or a journalist; I used to spend my life corner by corner around this world in search of the meaning of life. I expressed my thoughts with the free structure of the prose, but I can’t do this anymore, now that I’m a locked poet inside a mental hospital. At least I’m glad to say that I’m not the obsessive kind of man that stalks women, but I visit her once in awhile and we never talk because I know it’s a complete waste of time. So I just observe her, also I do the same with many of the patients, very closely like a detective would do; the bad part of this is that I never solve their cases, but the doctor does (with pills, If you want to know the truth). The doctor wants to shut up the minds of the patients on an attempt to hear an expected answer from them about their mental issues, but I am a poet, with a little of insanity according to the “diagnosis”. If you are interested in knowing the negative side of me, Sherlock Holmes once said: “Where there is no imagination there is no horror”, and in schizophrenia there is a lot of twisted imagination.
Today he visited me at my cell and I explained to him my theory about that woman’s disease, but he replied to me with a quick smile of disapproval on his face. Not a problem, doctor. I know what I’m saying in full consciousness, in an attempt to understand the frustrated expression I notice in her melancholic eyes. How terrible the void she feels inside must be, and no matter how hard she tries, the contained energy beneath her chest drains all her energy destroying each particle of her emotions. The same occurs in the outer space. Think about it, doctor. Those dark holes of dark matter could destroy the universe at any moment, but look closer: Didn’t the universe came from a dark hole? So it can destroy or create; not matter what, because it’s unavoidable. So that happens with her, doctor, the void she feels inside her is an uncontrollable mass of dense energy compressed. You have to understand me, doctor.
-”I do understand what you say”- the doctor vaguely answers - “but what you suggest is nothing more but a messed up idea. And if you excuse me, I need to treat other patients”.
Finding no satisfaction in his answer, I clap my hands to my face and sit on the bed next to me as a disappointed patient would do. Feeling the old softness of the cushions, I realize I’m falling into a meditative-mental state due to the effects of the medication;I no longer hear any inner voices telling me to leave this body, even if I still repeat to myself how dark, empty and bare can a dark soul like hers be.
As I close my eyes, I secretly slide my hand beneath the pillow to make sure that my notebook is still there. I always repeat the same ritual before sleeping to keep my notes away from the doctor’s sight; if I don’t do this, he’d discover me and would put me into strict vigilance (I don’t want to be chained to this bed for one month as the last time). I hide this old notes because I used to write about her even before noticing her existence in this hospital. I’m not the obsessive kind of man that stalks women, I’m just very… Perhaps I’m losing myself while listening to the distant whisper of the ocean, as my imagination moves towards the peaceful rhythm of the waves.
I look upon the rising sunshine. “Catherine,” I exclaim with joy when I see her. “How was your day?” She looks at me with doomed eyes as if I didn’t know what I just asked. “Taking a free time from work to see my son,” she answers sounding proud of it and I can’t avoid a big smile on my face. Even though we didn’t know each other yet, all the questions we were eagerly awaiting to ask couldn’t answer who we are, so we decided to talk about nothing. Silent thoughts, as we watched the sunset falling over the sea we became ghosts blurring along with the sky, like old memories that actually never happened; however, that strange woman was my mother and I was her son.
We spent the night contemplating a moon that wasn’t there, an immense dark horizon of water and sky. All I could hear was her slow respiration, the only signal of her presence that still remains in my mind as a constant thought that makes me feel safe inside this solitary room with no light and empty spaces. The time is not indispensable when night falls… And if I could just talk to her! But she won’t listen, no, she will only glance at that empty sky with ashen eyes.
Where was I, the time she used to be my mother? And all my feelings were the result of all these thoughts about her that are not enough, and simultaneously, more than I can handle. I don’t need a psychiatrist, no sir, and I shouldn’t be inside this mental hospital because I never had the opportunity to see the stars, how they shine by themselves in the middle of a big ocean of emptiness; the universe!
All becomes an illusion and I’m the only one being fascinated and abducted by its beauty, and yet sedated by the medications, I still can’t stop wondering about how can the universe be so like you. “Catherine”, that was your name; now your name is Margaret and tomorrow Olivia. Talk to me, Wilhelmina. In addition, I’ll show you many fragments of my heart that I spread around the world, and the reason is that I’ve traveled so many times to so many places, and I found beauty, but not as infinite as the one you carry in your eyes. Please look at me!
Excited by my own soliloquy, I avidly stand up from my bed, breathing heavily because of my pounding heart. My sedated body should be unable to move, but no matter what I start walking, walking and walking as faster as I can in the middle of the night through the cold hospital halls. I feel so light like a phantom. Then the sound of a pen falling to the floor stops me. Inner voices boiling in my mind, they tell me nothing but the sense of freedom that brought me to insanity, because she was contemplating through the same window every single damned day! There she was, the ethereal spirit – I’m startled, petrified by its presence. My heart collapses when I find her looking at me with an inquisitive glance. Oh, like an empress from the past coming towards me with a dagger, not in her hands, but in her almost scarlet eyes.
