These Walls

Walls.

I hadn’t thought about walls much before. They were just there, there to keep the cold and the rain out. They were the barriers my enemies were invariably on the other side of to me. Sometimes those enemies were inside walls and I had to get them out somehow, or – sometimes - I was behind the walls where my enemies could not get at me. Despite, this I hadn’t thought that much about walls much through my life.

That is, until I came here.

Now, these walls - all four of them - bound my life. One has a solid wooden door in it and one has the small high window with the thick rusted iron bars across it. The other two are as bare as my life now.

Oh, I do have a ceiling and a floor, of course. I also have a bed, a chair, a table and a hole in the corner of the room. But it is the walls that fill my thoughts. It is the walls I stare at all day and it is the walls I dream of at night.

I would’ve thought, before I came here, that it would be thoughts of what lies beyond these walls that would torment me. That I’d fill my waking hours with thoughts of all I’ve lost, lying beyond these walls. My dreams filled with the temptations of everything that now lies far beyond my reach.

But, no… all I think about is these walls. The large black bricks, slick with a dampness that never dries. The poor light fills this cell with deep shadows. All I can see when my eyes are open are these walls and all I see when I can no longer bear to see them, and close my eyes, are these same four walls.

But none of that does worry me. Because I know that when they do take me from here, which they will do soon, then that will be the last time I see the sky. It will be the last time I see these walls, or remember that I once had a life beyond them.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]