The sofa is uncomfortable, specifically, the cushion I am sat on feels lumpy. I just can’t get comfortable.

The cushion is a rocky ocean and I am a dingy flung too and throw, easily capsizable, and yet despite the waves crashing into me I am yet to be flung to the deepest depths.

Silence. This is the quietest thunder storm known to man. There is only my breath, visible in the freezing temperatures, intermingling with the frost on the window pane. I breathe, and the walls breathe too. They breathe in unison, in solidarity.

It’s kind of them to do that, these walls that have become my confines, desperate to play the role of jailer and commendable host. We breathe together in unison to abate the cold.

With each breath they creak all around me, are they counting down the seconds? Are they yelling in solidarity? It isn’t comforting. Instead I’m filled with a dread that I can feel creeping through my body, starting with my numb toes and filtering it’s way through every organ, limb, and nerve.

I am exposed at sea. My skeleton is laid bare, my flesh shredded by the freezing exhales of the walls, their icy bites taking chunks from me until I’m nothing.

Until I’m nothing.

Somewhere in the walls there is a rattling. Gently like a child’s rattle, gentle like my mothers kiss she sweeps across my cheek before I drive away. I hardly ever see my mother, I see her heart even less and so I cherish those gentle kisses that warm my hearth and tell me I’m safe.

Somewhere in the walls there is a rattling, like chains, a string of prisoners being lead to the scaffold. They jingle as they march, some sob, some hum, most stare blankly ahead as I do now.

The tide has become ferocious and although I am trying to throw the salt water overboard, each muscle in my body screaming for me to move faster. My chest rises and falls with the rolling thunder pounding in my brain. The lightning shatters my neurones, I’m short circuiting. Am I still breathing?

The walls heave as the rattling intensifies from a jingle to a bell tolling my end. They cry out with everything I want to say, to scream. Run they yell! However, I am immobile. The sea has filled my lungs with salt and I can’t breathe.

The walls are my jailers and my friends, they scream for me as the key opens the lock. I imagine them trying to hold them back in a futile attempt to hold the barricade.

There is a voice downed out by their screams. The wall opposite me looks me in the eye, it’s sweet eyes pleading to listen to the walls coos of support. Oh, it’s me in the mirror, but who’s eyes are those? Who’s arms hold me kindly like a blanket freshly pulled from the cupboard, still cold against my bones?

Suddenly, my mind goes blank. I’m empty. Somewhere it has become too much and a tiny dingy has been lost beneath the waves, the white light of the moon casting her serenity upon the yellow PVC submerged beneath the sheer power of the ocean, an external force boring down upon its pathetic seams.

I’m hollow and exposed. I wish I were a mouse, then I could hide in the walls, let their air fill my lungs and their sweet kisses draw me into their serene darkness. They’d apologise for the dust of course, it can’t be helped.

There is s voice again. I look into the mirror once more, I don’t recognise that frail creature. Sun hasn’t settle on its skin for a while. The shadows cast by the walls cannot obscure the purple marks on my moonlit skin, each one pronounced, re-enacting the notes I sung as they pummelled me to dust.

I’ll go now, I’ll finally pluck up the courage to scuttle into the walls. A heap of dust getting swept away. They did get angry when the house wasn’t cleaned properly. Then again, they also got angry when their team lost the football… But that was then. Now I have my jailers who have given me my stale bread and pressed notes of solidarity into my palm. They’ve kissed me like my mother. They’ve held me safely in suspension, stopped time till they can pull my wreckage from the ocean floor and make my sanctuary a home.