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Malnutrition

It was a permanent sunset.
A permanent sunset.
A permanent sunset.

A locked room. In permanent sunset.
Permanent sunset.
Permanent sunset.

A glass window with microscopic people.
Transparent figures, flickering and dancing, and floating on sunset.

Sunset. Sunset.

     He laid there. But also he stood. The walls were ocher and the floor was dust. Dust of years alone. He was locked. For how long? He tried to scream but barely whimpered. There was hunger, or thirst, or fear, starvation.

     There were words decorating the walls, but decorating is a kind word. They were raping the walls. Written in charcoal, they scrambled and moved. Raping the ochre which was almost mud, if it weren't for the cracks, they raped those too. There was no safe haven, the words covered them all.

     Yet he couldn't read them. They were still for a moment then scrambled again. As if it were an obscenity to stare at them. He hurried to a corner, was there someone outside? The words kept scrambling. Then the letters became eyes. Looking at him, craving his legs.

     There was dust on his shoulders and arms; suddenly he was outside. Looking at this house dipped in the yellow sunlight, everything was quiet for a moment.

A hand shook behind a wall.

Then he was inside.

He knocked at a door, knocked is so kind, he plunged his bones. Not remembering if there was even a door there to begin with. Desperate and scared like any other child would be. Haunted by the ochre and the dust chanting at him.

There was someone behind the door.
He stayed locked forever until he woke.
                                                               ...and it was time to go to school.