I am mad, I am mad, I am mad.

The people tell me so day in and day out. I hear their whispers. But they are not so loud as to drown out the screams.

In my waking hours, my chambers flood with oil thick as blood. It soaks my clothes, seeps into my hair, pours in through my eyes. There are screams from the other side of the doors. They scream and scream and scream and I am mad.

In my sleeping hours, they do not relent. I am mad and they still scream and I feel the oil in my lungs and it tastes like blood and I am mad and my stomach is full of it and they are screaming and I am mad.

There are days when I lose myself. Keeping busy becomes my friend and I am safe from the reckoning of my own mind. The screams are now whispers.

She is mad, she is mad, she is mad, they say.

Hearing them does not cure me.

Mad, insane, sick.

I am sick, I am sick, I am sick.

I am cared for, I am taught, I am fed. But the fullness of my belly does not mean my stomach will not make room for my sickness.

I am fine until I am not. I lay in my bed. Its sheets are slick with the oil from the morning. There is a pounding on my door.

My belly is full, but I am malnourished by sanity.

I am mad, I am mad, I am mad.

I am destroyed.