Two Dark Rooms

A Poem by Blackbird

Caw

The boy locked himself in.

The girl was put in there.

Two dark rooms.

A wall separates them.

The girl has a key that does not fit in her door’s lock.

The girl gives the boy her key. He puts it into his door and it unlocks. He gives it back to her, a symbol of hope.

He finds a lightbulb on the other side of the door. It’s not as beautiful as the girl described, or as he thought. It’s not as good, because she isn’t there.

A lone lightbulb in a long hallway.

And in that hallway is an open room. In that room is a person, not unlike the boy, but not in the same way the girl in the locked room is.

The person in the open room calls out into the hallway, “Hello?”

And the boy breaks the light and returns to his room.

The boy never tells the girl in the locked room that he broke the light, for fear that she would blame herself.

The girl never tells the boy that she heard the sound of broken glass and that she blames herself.

Two rooms return to darkness.

But the boy looks up to the hall, and a light appears. He hadn’t seen it before, but at the end of the long hallway, there is another door. And through that door’s keyhole shines a light.

He screams to himself, for he can not even share in the dark with his friend.

He asks again whether she sees any light.

She replies, no.

She thinks to herself about the day she will lie to the boy and say yes so that maybe he will leave, and go into his light alone, and forget all about her.

And then a pounding on the wall.

A great pounding.

It scares the girl.

She can’t tell what it is for a moment.

And then she hears the sounds of wet against the ground.

The boy is trying to break through the wall with his hands.

He punches as hard as he can, scraping his flesh and spilling his blood onto the ground.

She screams for him to stop, but he doesn’t.

He yells.

She threatens to swallow her key.

He stops.

The girl sees that he will do anything to make her see the light that she may never see, and she yells at him. She tells him to forget her. She tells him that the beauty of the light is too great to turn away from. She tells him to forget her and run to the person waiting in the open room. Run with them into the light and forget all about her. For she will never see the light, and there is nothing that the boy can do about it. And if he doesn’t, she will swallow the key.

The boy says that he won’t give up.

The girl says that he must.

And the boy does both.

He goes about the girl's instructions. He takes the hardest steps towards the light, away from the wall, away from the one who opened his door, and into the hall.

He talks to the person in the open room, and they fall in love. The boy takes them to the wall that connects him to the girl in the locked room and they all talk.

And the boy says how great it will be when the girl in the locked room finds someone past her door.

She replies, “Yes, it will be great.” But she believes only loneliness is in store for her.

Eventually the person from the boy’s open room talks about what they would like to see past the door at the end of the long hallway.

They say that the boy must stop waiting for the girl. She will be there forever, they say. The boy almost believes them but feels powerless to prove himself right.

And as they walk into the hallway, hand in hand, the light at the end of the hall grows brighter and more beautiful.

They walk to the door at the end of the long hallway, and the door opens.

The light says, “Welcome.”

And the person from the open room steps forward, with the boy’s hand in theirs.

But the boy stands in the hall.

“What are you doing?” They ask.

“I cannot leave her.” The boy replies.

“You must. You cannot save her. Only seeing the light can do that. And as it stands, she will never see the light. I doubt she believes in it anymore.” They say.

The boy lets go of their hand. “I must try.”

“I will not join you. And she will swallow her key if she hears your voice not accompanied by mine. She will know you left me, and she will swallow her key.”

And then the boy turned to the light and began to yell.

“Why must you show yourself to me and not to the girl in the locked room?! We are two in the same, and yet you show yourself to only me!”

And the light says, “You cannot save her. Only I can.”

And the boy says, “You aren’t worth my time if you do not show yourself to her.”

And the light says, “And if you do not come to me, then you will not be worth her time.”

And the boy starts to cry.

He knows that there is nothing he can do to make a hole big enough for her to escape through.

The person from the open room puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

And the boy looks back down the hall to his old room and sees that the light reaches to his blood on the wall.

And the boy looks back towards the light. “Even if I come to you, I will never be able to forget her.”

And for a moment, it says nothing.

But then the light says, “Here.”