Kopf, by Sabine Voigt
Confined to the Room
John Grey
It is not the virus.
It’s the walls.
They’re what I’m infected with.
I hate them.
I fear them
as I’m terrified of the ceiling
and the floor
that makes much of how it holds me up
when it’s really holding me in.
I knock on the walls.
Nothing answers.
So I pound and pound.
I get a response this time.
It’s pain.
Lying in bed,
my insides rot
from lack of sunlight,
the slow leak of oxygen
out of the room,
voices on telephones
that may as well be speaking
from Mars,
and faces on my laptop
that move about the frame
as jerky and expressionless
as zombies.
I live in a world
when I am all there is.
Who is there to tell me
I’m not dead already?
John Grey
It is not the virus.
It’s the walls.
They’re what I’m infected with.
I hate them.
I fear them
as I’m terrified of the ceiling
and the floor
that makes much of how it holds me up
when it’s really holding me in.
I knock on the walls.
Nothing answers.
So I pound and pound.
I get a response this time.
It’s pain.
Lying in bed,
my insides rot
from lack of sunlight,
the slow leak of oxygen
out of the room,
voices on telephones
that may as well be speaking
from Mars,
and faces on my laptop
that move about the frame
as jerky and expressionless
as zombies.
I live in a world
when I am all there is.
Who is there to tell me
I’m not dead already?