Mellow Fades, Echoes Rise
written by: Kyle-Jai Reid
Thoughts arise,
trying to wash them away.
I keep them deep,
with a lock and key.
But yet they reappear one day.
I slam the door to drown them out,
but the sound of broken hinges
echoes through the empty halls of my mind.
The creaks from the door reopening
scare me.
Some say I’m still in hiding
to this day.
When the dark thoughts rise,
roaming the empty halls,
I feel the ground beneath my feet begin to fall,
pulling me into the abyss
where it all began.
Only me,
the door,
and the thoughts behind the walls.
The door jars open,
a small glimpse revealed,
but I wake up —
and suddenly it was all a dream.
Yet I still hear the echoes
to this day.
I try to push the memories down,
bottle them up,
lock them away,
like forcing a cork into a bottle.
Still, they rise again.
I slam the door,
trying to keep them out,
but there’s only so much a door can take
before it breaks.
I hear myself —
mentally exhausted
from holding it all in for so long.
They hear my echoes,
and I hear theirs too.
It scares me,
because I know the time is near.
I hide.
I lock my head under a pillow,
or drown it all out with my mellow.
It empties the halls,
quieting the echoes for a while.
But the thoughts rise anyway,
roaming my head.
My mellow keeps the halls empty,
but it can’t last forever.
Eventually, I come back to my senses,
and they hit me again,
dragging me back
to the place I started,
before the mellow.
All that’s left:
my senses,
the bad thoughts,
and the guard of hope
in the form of walls.
The bad thoughts pace outside those walls,
visible, patient, waiting.
And yet, I finally awaken —
it was all just a nightmare,
but it wasn’t.
It was real.
And I can still hear them.
***
While in the dark halls of this dream,
I hear the quiet whispers
of the voice of the person who once helped me.
Nasty words spoken
by the voice that once saved me.
Tears hit the cold floor,
erupting into more voices —
some quiet,
most loud,
like the scream of parents
when you haven’t done what you were told.
I drop to my knees,
skin scraping as I land,
blood pouring out of me,
like I hugged a bomb
to protect a loved one.
They didn’t just bruise me emotionally —
the pain becomes physical,
shading my perception.
It feels identical to a game of hangman.
Each time I do something wrong,
my body feels like it’s slowly beginning to hang.
Dream or nightmare,
it feels real.
When I rise from my sleep,
my body is in shock —
unable to move,
unable to breathe.
This night was never meant to be revisited,
yet I say that
as it happens every day.
- Mellow Fades, Echoes Rise - February 10, 2026
