Tina

2:16

Tina Bryson

 

In the distance I saw it , the old clock tower, with its barred windows, and its crumbling walls. The clock was always a picture of perfection, on time, never a second late or early, flawless. Those bricks an earthy red, they contrasted so well against the black metal bars. That clock tower was my only view and my calendar.

My home was now a single room, furnished with a bed, a commode,  window with a view, and a door that locked from the outside. The very first time the door had closed behind me it was 2:16 pm and each day, I mark the wall at 2:16. But each mark was more than a day to me, it was a reminder of a day I spent in a pharmaceutically induced haze. My medications made me groggy and out of it, but they kept me smiling, I was always smiling. Though it didn’t feel like the warm fuzzy feeling you get when you’re happy, it felt like a sickness. A sickness so deep within it hurt more than that which had already plagued my mind. My family put me in this place because sometimes I couldn’t control my temper, those days all I could see was red. Other days I was on cloud nine, never a day where felt sad or was not laughing. It hurt my family that I was so emotionally fragile, they tiptoed on a fine line, and on that fine line there were bits of glass. The day I came here was when they had jumped the line to the otherside. The day they made me go into my room facing the clock tower.

That tower was everything I hated, but in my own way I worshipped it. Marveling at its architectural design, yet wanting to see it destroyed and let it crumble no different than like a childs block set. Hoping, no praying, that some deity would hear me and grant me the wish of another view, knowing that infernal clock tower will be the end to what little mind I have left. Yet each time I say this, I stop and think, how on earth would I know when it was 2:16?