Abandoned Taunton State Hospital | a world of missing pieces

just like that, the illness returned.
she spread her wings out over him like a solar eclipse
and with the sizzling sound of burning circuitry
enveloped him in a world of missing pieces
and half-glimpsed nightmares.
reeling from the shock, he held up his hand
as though to shield his eyes from the blinding darkness -
but it tore right through him like
murky floodwaters sweeping through some peasant village.
there was a certain elemental beauty about her -
she was a wraith made of every scar in the world.
ageless, all-knowing, she stared impenetrably
and hers was the gaze of the sun, the moon, the ocean -
all that is without time, everything to which
man is but a speck of dust.
she had knocked the sky out of its alignment
and set all things in places they should not be.
where once light and life had been,
there were only boarded windows and tragic pasts,
things no one should ever know or see.
what mouths were left whispered words devoid of meaning,
what eyes were left betrayed no spark of hope -
and so she sat serenely, perched like a lion over a
freshly killed antelope, licking her claws and
silently roaring, "you knew i'd be back, didn't you.
you knew i'd be back all along."

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'a world of missing peices' taken at Taunton State Hospital, demolished 2009. View of dayroom at end of wing, likely a 'snake pit' ward where the most ill or violent were kept. Image/text by Matthew Christopher.

Taunton State Hospital is a chapter in my book, Abandoned America: Dismantling the Dream.
Buy a signed copy via this link or get it on Amazon using the link below to learn more!