She didn’t scream when they wheeled her out,
didn’t look back, didn’t whisper doubt.
But the air shifted sideways as the door clicked closed,
and the color drained from the walls like it knew what it chose.
Her room had been warm, like old decay,
with handprints smudged in childish gray.
But the moment her silhouette was gone from the light,
the corners faded into permanent night.
The peach turned pale, the lilac grayed,
and every surface warped the way memory fades.
It wasn’t repainted. No brush, no tool–
just the paint itself, shedding like it broke a rule.
The walls changed color when she left,
like they exhaled sorrow, then held their breath.
She didn’t cry, but the ceiling did–
and something old peeled back and hid.
No one speaks her name on rounds,
but the nurses walk softer on that ground.
They open the door but don’t step through,
and the new girl inside keeps asking who.
She drew on the walls in ink and spit,
with broken crayons and half-truths lit.
And now the paint forms shapes at night,
like it’s trying to rebuild her bite.
I watched a nurse press her hand to the wall,
and pull back shaking, like it knew it all.
Said the paint felt wrong–“Like skin too thin,”
and the silence cracked with a breath from within.
I sit in her room now, sleep in her bed,
but her lullabies whisper inside my head.
And when I close my eyes just right–
the walls begin to glow with spite.