This post is written in response to Daily Prompt – The Zone.

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I love the damp smell of a building in ruin, the way a place can live and breathe with only mice and cockroach skittering inside.

Let’s get lost, hmm? An old asylum should do the trick — let’s do some urban exploring. It’s such a wonder to get lost in a place that’s so beautiful yet so melancholy.

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Here’s our entrance, a door with the window broken out, on the back side of the asylum, don’t cut your hand on the window frame. It’s a fitting entrance, one that’s unnoticed and misplaced, attached to the building at a thirty degree angle to the back wall.

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Diaphanous, sheer, veil across summer window frame. Most of the windows in this room were covered with the same shroud, I designate this room “The Room of Turin”.

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The hallway along the only path into the building, slowly being reclaimed by nature as vines snake through gaps in the windows. Flecked paint on the walls reminds me to put on my mask — apparently lead isn’t too great for your health.

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 This is the only light fixture still attached to the ceiling in this thirty foot hallway, and while it’s broken and useless it’s more valuable than most everything else there.

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“The Stairway to Heaven” — These stairs led me to the second floor, a place that reminded me of what Narnia must be like. On a side note, I’m severely turned around at this point, I must’ve walked at least ten minutes down snaking hallways to get to this stairwell.

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At the end of this hallway, when I walked in, something crashed in the room on the right. I’m still not sure what it was, I didn’t know poltergeist messed about in the day time!

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The doorway that leads to the “Serene Room”, it reminds me of a portal to Hell.

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The Serene Room. This room is deadly, absolutely quiet. Sunshafts are illuminated from the windows as drops of sunlight bounce off floating motes of dust.

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My view from inside looking out, at a window with an old asylum gown hung on a hook just adjacent. Old pipes and gas lines snake around willy nilly in the asylum, mimicking nature’s vines and twigs that strive to reclaim the structure.

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Somehow, after wandering another fifteen minutes, I found myself in a corner on the second floor next to a stairwell, which led to this door. A hallway lined with patient cells that leads to the way out the front door of the asylum.

Let’s get lost. Please and thank you.
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Cracks in Paint
Without sense of self,
no need for direction,
let’s get lost, lover,
at nobody’s discretion.

Follow me until wit’s end,
down the dark, dank, and dreary,
I’m always close, just your hand extend,
I’ll support you when you get weary.

Evil eyes and poltergeist,
it’s their faces leering,
walk past, lover, past the mice,
it’s not you nor I steering.