Title: HR: Hideous Regime

I have a window, and for eight days someone in a position of authority kept finding new ways to close it. I have a window of tolerance; the place where a nervous system can think clearly, stay present, and choose instead of react. I have a window that shut so fast I could feel my own alarms sound from the inside. I painted the words directly onto this canvas, in their exact phrasing, because guidance I was seeking at the time asked me to see precisely which sentences did the damage; not the feeling of it, the actual sentences. I have a right to a window that stays open. I have a right to let words land like rain on a coat built for weather, instead of a wound built for keeping. The drips across this canvas are not decoration; they came from other rooms in my life where I was overpowered, long before this role existed, and they explain exactly why those words found a door already unlocked. I am still asking where my window is, and now I know exactly what it takes to keep it from closing.