Tiny Rooms

A spur of the moment poem, about growth

Tiny Rooms.

 

 

I have a fear of tiny rooms,
Sterile, white tiled places that hold.
The kind of four walls that make
My panic rise.

 

Like, the tiny rooms where doctors come
Bringing in test results like a bad smell.
I have to sit quietly time and time again
While they tell me of the new horrid disease
I’ve given myself, from my apathy of living.

 

Like, the tiny room where the gifted assessors
Told me that I’d never amount to anything.
Hours of examinations, just to hear that my
Creativity wasn’t genius, only acting out.

 

Like, the tiny room where my Mom first confessed
That sometimes she wished she had never had children.
Life was hard enough dealing with her own problems,
Her own guilty conscience made us too much to bear.

 

Like, the tiny room the company gave me,
A cubicle where I first learned about my criminal nature.
Where I could freely hurt the names on pages,
They were too far away to feel, but fear came all the same.

 

Like, the tiny room Mom took me,  to let me know
Divorce loomed in our future unless I told her what to do.
They hated being with each other, they hated being apart
What kind of answer could my ten year old mind give?

 

Like, the tiny room of psychology where they told me
My own body didn’t want to see me happy.
That a lifelong regiment of pills would be
My only recourse.

 

Like, the tiny room where she told me
“You’re too fat to be a ballerina”
When all I wanted was approval and maybe grace
That teacher really thought it was all for the best.

 

Like, the tiny rooms I wander through in dreams
Where shadows and my own guilt wait for me,
Where anxieties populate like street vendors
Tempting and screaming out their wares.

 

And yet, I grew up, and I grew out,
I became a tree with roots that found the ground.
They broke through those sterile white tiles,
Cracking their dull restraint.

 

In some years this tree of mine caused a panic,
No one expecting branches where resignation should be.
In some people this caused so much anger,
But you really have to shed your seed pod sometime.

 

Even though my hold was weak,  my leaves reached
Even though I remain stunted, my roots cajoled deeper.
Until,  I thought I could feel the sunlight through the ceiling
Despite the plaster, linoleum wreckage  tangled around me.

 

Though I still know that closed in fear,
and I carry scars of the wounds inflicted when I grew,
Now I’ve grown, to where those tiny rooms
just aren’t big enough to hold me.
 

Author's Note

Comments and crits welcome. Be aware this is a first draft/work in progress.