I opened a hell portal on my bedroom floor yesterday.
I didn’t really do it on purpose,
It just sort of ended up happening.

I looked down, and there was a hell portal.
“Huh,” I thought. “That’s a hell portal.”
“Wonder how that happened.”

I knew if I didn’t try to stop it, it would happen at some point,
I just wasn’t ready for that point to be now.
And now I have a hell portal swirling around on my bedroom floor.

Every time I look at it, I have to look away quickly.
After all, if I look at it, I’m acknowledging that it’s there.
And that would mean I’d have to do something about it.

The hell portal’s been there all day.
And it doesn’t seem to want to just disappear.
Maybe if I pretend hard enough, it will.

Henry Pincus is a College first-year hoping to major in Creative Writing. In this poem, written in 2022, they explore struggling with motivation and living with mental illness. They hope this poem can help others who have opened hell portals of their own and make them feel less alone.