MHI: LIMINALITY by Donna Lynch

Trigger Warning: This piece addresses mental health

The HWA is pleased to launch its Mental Health Initiative, a coordinated roll-out of events, resources, and activities intended to promote positive mental health, foster the concept of hope, and challenge the stigma of mental illness in the horror genre. The initiative, run by the organization’s Wellness Committee, launches in June, and includes the following blog posts from Of Horror and Hope, a downloadable anthology of poems, flash fiction, and personal reflections on mental health by HWA members.

LIMINALITY
Donna Lynch

Tomorrow
and for months to come
I may be somewhere else
Somewhere high above health
Too far from fear
to be safe or salvaged
For in this awful, stairless
glittering high-rise
there is only the now
only the need
and only one way down

Yet tomorrow
and for months to come
I may be in a place
So dark that it doesn’t exist
That can’t be described
because it doesn’t have function
it doesn’t have form
it was never designed for living
It was never designed at all

But as I write this now
I am in the between
in the halls
and deserted spaces
the nearly empty pools
the waiting rooms
and there isn’t much here
but they are far better shelters
than unstable glass towers
and infinite pits

These echoing thresholds
unremarkable passages
and liminal spaces
are the only places
where I exist as myself
quiet and calm

I am a stranger
within any other structure
and I am nothing
when I’m in the void
but I do what I can
—as the architect—
to make it look welcoming
and marketable
for as long as possible.