NO FREE THOUGHT

A daily pill. Blue on one side, white on the other. Sixty tiny milligrams of something or other to suppress everything normal people would call creative. The white walls, the white sheets, the white uniforms, the white labcoats, the white doors with locks and the white-lined windows wired shut. To suppress. A flickering television. A flickering television with muted sound. Black and white. A ringing silence. Collecting dust. And a checkered floor. Black and white. A checkered floor and a thick oak chair. A checkered floor and a thick oak chair with leather straps and a cord tethering it to an electrical socket. A white electrical socket. A thick oak chair to be used twice a week for six weeks. I don't remember ever using it. That's suppressed too. A closely monitored set of correspondence. Trickles away as time moves on. A set of forgotten relationships. Forgotten or suppressed. A vast green lawn expanding forever, beyond which is incomprehensible. Unimaginable. Unimaginable because we are not allowed to imagine it. To imagine.