I stared at the wall.  No further than two inches away from my nose.  There it was.  I stared at the wall.

 

The paint had minuscule pits.  Like the surface of the moon.  Small etchings from the underlying plaster.  Little cracks.  I stared at the wall.

 

Thr wall stood vertically beneath the perfectly horizontal stucko ceiling above me.  But the ceiling was not my friend.  I stared at the wall.

 

A spider crossed my view angle, no further than two inches away from my nose.  There it was.  But it never saw me.  It simply ignored me.  I stared at the wall.

 

The night came and the wall became quite difficult to see.  When I closed my eyes, I couldn't remember what the wall looked like.  When I opened my eyes, I couldn't see what the wall looked like.  I stood there in the dark, confident that the wall was still standing there in front of me.

 

Morning came and the wall had a new water stain created by a drool from the unfaithful ceiling of stucko above.  Be not afraid, my wall.  For I will not falter and abandon you.  The wall stared at me with the mark of a dried tear down its length.

 

You smelled of ten thousand egg and bacon breakfasts, ten thousand chicken soup lunches, and ten thousand roast beef dinners.  But the treacherous kitchen was no more.  You stared at me with the smell of lost purpose.

 

They came to take some other walls away, the ceiling too, then most of the floor.  I held fast to you, no further than two inches away from my nose.  They can take away your kitchen, they can take away your ceiling.  They can take away your floor, but you'll never be without me.  I stared at your silence.

 

I tried to stay.  I tried to hold on.  But my eyes were torn away from you with the sound of a thousand phone books being torn in half.  Your vast emptiness reached out to me, but I could not reach back.  I'm sorry I have failed you.  I was overpowered.  They forced me into a small room.  I stare at a new wall.

 

This new wall, no further than two inches away from my nose, is a colourful and vibrant beige.  It radiates total and unconstrained boredom.  It screams nothingness.  It smelled of the deeply inebriating fragrance of empty shelves in an abandoned pencil warehouse.  If given one of these missing pencils, it could write endless stories of its visitors past, filling the upper left part of a single page.  I stared at the padded wall.

 

I stared at the padded wall, no further than two inches away from my nose.