Danielle Blake

Safara We See

My name is Safara, and I piss fire. The nurse says it’s an infection, but I know it’s the ceiling tiles. It’s always the ceiling tiles. I sleep on my stomach, so I don’t have to look at them. But I can always hear him. Talking through those scratchy waves of plaster. I don’t like his double talk. But he’s only in charge of the fire and that’s not the worst of it.

The worst part about sleeping on your stomach is the cold of the floor on your belly, except for the little round hole where Mendie lives. Mendie survives on lint, and he’s immune to the shocks of the bed, so Mendie doesn’t like it when I sleep on the floor. I try to explain to him about the tiles of terror, but he only grins and scuttles back to his warm lint kingdom.

As I’m lying on the cold tile floor, I hear the bits and pieces of words. Sometimes I wonder if the people that tell me what to do all the time are fake. The people that say the ceiling tiles aren’t real. Because I know these things are all real.

I lie awake at night thinking these thoughts, crossing my fingers and toes, hoping they don’t try and make me get off the floor. Let them try, just try. I’ll show them. They don’t believe in mattress shock waves, or belly debris providing nourishment, and definitely not faces and voices in the ceiling tile. They tell me to ignore it. Ha! I can’t ignore it any more than they can ignore the neighbor’s dog at 2 a.m. All I have to do is wait for them. Gradually the answers will come.

Danielle Blake lives in Kentucky and works as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital for children. She is a student at the University of Southern Indiana, pursuing a B.S. in geology and physics. She enjoys writing poetry and short fiction as a means of emotional growth and personal expression.