White walls, white sheets, and a white woven blanket tucked up to shoulders.
No window for the patient.
Beep. Beep. Beep.

No visitors to break the beat.
No reason to care. No visitors expected.
Acceptance of parents unable to love.

Waking up to a gray, cold tray with ruby-red Jell-O, silently quivered,
Nestled next to a lifeless green mystery left of the bed.
Arm slung up by cable to a pole, ensnared like a prisoner chained to a gray, musky wall of a dungeon. The long, slow exhale of surrender leaves the mind blank.

But it would be okay.
No one would yell.
There are Hollywood friends on the wall for company.
They wouldn’t blame for being run over.
They wouldn’t shame for being a burden.

But the monster did.
His evil was impatient.
Ice formed in the air as he entered.

“What have you done this time?!”

A verdict of guilt was not a question, but a reminder of the sentencing earned for ineptitude.
Smokey darkness blanketed a withering heart.
Stumbling, bumbling, useless blathering groans stuttered.
The monster declared guilt and suffering will follow.

Days fade out of sight.
A dampened mind lost, searching out sunlight eclipsed.
Clarity, space, time. No, not one could be sustained.
Left only with nightmares for an escape
An improvement to the sentence of a father who won’t love.