These Walls are My Skin
Dear friend,
What are you hiding?
There are secrets in this room. I have one in my pocket and I leave them in these words for some of you.
Two years ago, light and absence caught my attention. Now they converge and I notice how kind the dark is.
I had a friend who lost her vision, but she still climbed mountains in her dreams. When I made her breakfast, I would ask her what she saw.
This January, I spent four consecutive days in total darkness. Not hiding, but listening to secrets. When the outside becomes one visual field, the inside lights up! I suspend my attention between the two and watch how they blur. You can do this in the light, too.
I look down. I feel my heartbeat in my hands.
Let’s share secrets. What color hides behind your eyes? Maybe I’ll tell you where I buried the heart.
With the generous aid of the Walter and Sarah Knestrick Award, Nichols continued her undergraduate research on absence and light by attending a Skycave Dark Retreat in Southern Oregon. This involved sitting in absolute darkness for four consecutive days. After attending the retreat in January 2025, she was offered a summer job at Skycave making food for the people in the dark. Nichols developed this body of work while living and working there.