The paint is  layered thickly, a dark, jagged mosaic, glistening like scaly armor. Green, black and purple battle for supremacy in a mass of tangled limbs. Distant footsteps shiver around the cavernous chamber, tall and proud, creamy columns stretching toward the heady heights. Maree is distracted, running a hand against the rippling wall, reveling in the feel of rough stone against delicate flesh. I am transfixed by another man’s imagination. I look through the woody window into my private tempest. Blues and blacks are a malevolent sea, mutant waves blotting out the purple sun. A small timber boat scales rippling mountains of death, on the precipice of utter annihilation. The room is silent but the paint screams and I can taste salt in my throat as I drown in the sea of tiles. Where is…

The traffic bickers outside, blackening my already dirty window with its smog. Bursts of Korean pepper the small room, bullets fired from the neighbor’s busy kitchen. They are cooking – I never know what but the smells are different, velvety and rich, seducing my sleepy senses. I open one eye and the small painting smiles down at me, rough brush strokes describing impossible curves, smothered in midnight blues and bottle greens. It is an organized mess, deep and simple, but quiet. My quiet is different; volcano orange and bumblebee yellow, busy and brash. It is the sound of humanity squashed into rectangular prisons, a melting pot of exotic flavors thrown together. 

I feel blue. The ceiling leers down as I lie in my watery tomb, memories gushing into the void; wounding, asphyxiating. The greasy scent of jealousy infuses with the oily sweat that makes hairs stand on end, like tiny towers pushing up from a sunburnt plain. I lie too heavily, bloated with visions of bedrooms and whispers. The sheets we shared are sandpaper against flesh, and I am forced under, crushed by the tidal weight into icy caverns of ink. I can breathe in here, but it is not air that fills screaming lungs. The world is salt and I am nothing, compressed into a tiny ball of matter, ancient, devolved and basic. A voice caresses my consciousness with words that bite, tiny teeth distracting from the cold. She is above the surface, dancing with a shadow atop frothy hills that roll gently, fading into orange fire.