Behind the Walls

There’s a moment when you find yourself in a room and can’t remember how you got there. That’s where this book began.

Room Without Walls was born in fragments of dreams I couldn’t shake, memories that didn't belong to any one version of me, and a quiet need to explore the architecture of being lost. I started writing this to understand something unspoken: the way identity unravels in silence, and how memory can act like a hallway that shifts behind you when you’re not looking.

Each poem in this book is a door, or a wall pretending not to be one. The structure came to me first. A pantoum inspired free verse hybrid where looping lines echo across rooms like footsteps that never left. I wanted repetition to feel haunting, but not redundant. To mirror how the mind circles pain, trauma, or guilt. Not in a straight line, but in spirals.

The idea of a haunted house has always fascinated me, but I wasn’t interested in ghosts that live in attics. I was interested in the ones that live in mirrors, in names, in choices. I imagined a narrator who doesn’t remember entering the maze who is unsure whether the structure is external or internal. Whether the trap is the place or their own perception.

The chapter format came from the need to give shape to that descent. Each chapter represents a deeper layer of disorientation:

Doors of Perception introduces the maze and its illusions.

The Traps Within explores the distortion of memory.

Rooms of Regret turns inward toward guilt and shame.

Paths of Paranoia spirals into fear, identity fracture, and mistrust of perception.

Descent into Madness closes the door. Or becomes it.

I wrote much of this collection late at night, when the world was quiet and memory could speak freely. Some lines came like whispers I wrote down before I even knew what they meant. Others I returned to again and again, adjusting their placement like shifting mirrors to reflect a different version of the same truth.

If you’ve ever questioned the shape of your mind or if you’ve ever felt like a version of yourself was watching, waiting, or trying to return, this book is for you. It’s a map written in echo. A maze made of rooms that remember you more than you remember them.

And even if you don’t recognize every door, I hope you feel the hush when one closes behind you.

- E. C. Mira