An Ode to a Bedroom

There is a clouded darkness in the room. One in which light is shining through white curtains casting a dim, foggy light that dances across dust particles floating in the air. I often wish my life was this peaceful, or at least interesting, but I have found neither to be adamantly true. Rather I seem to find myself floating through what I would call a fruitless struggle towards an end I do not wish to achieve and yet cannot wait to ascend to. I am a salmon swimming up a stream knowing that at the end I reach no mate, but rather a vast ocean of a world waiting with lips covering teeth.

I sleep. I eat. I dream. I have no understanding of the world outside of that of my room, a room I know the light is trying to enter. I press my cheek against the cool glass frozen by the night winds and know that the sun must shine, it's only a cloud passing over that has created the haze I see. There is a breeze that I feel against the base of my foot from the place where the wall and the floor have been shrinking away from each other. I lie with my face against the hardwood floor and pretend I can see through the crack. My eyes feel the breeze. I reach towards the crack, grazing my fingers along the baseboard. I slice my finger on a splinter sticking out, but I simply stare at the pooling blood.

When I wake up there is a crusted scab on the tip of my forefinger. My hair has come undone from its braid and has drifted onto my cheek. I sit up, resting back on my elbows, the cold of the floor biting through the thin, worn fabric of the pajamas I bought at a big box store in the city. The mind is so lingering in the early hours of the day, grasping onto certain elements of who we are to explore in the quiet.

I have a recurring dream where I am running down the street and it is raining. I come to my house to find it empty, and I know that everyone is gone. Does this mean something? Am I afraid of being left behind or am I searching for meaning in a fatuous world? And there are voices below the window, like windchimes, high pitched and sing-song. I wonder if I am making chimes into voices, if I am paranoid or hopeful. I bang on the window just in case there is someone who can hear me. There is nothing but the wind.

I fall asleep with my head against the glass, my nose leaves a mark against the window like a pig. It smears when I try to wipe it away. The distortment of the world through the grime feels more realistic than the crystal clear image of the clean glass surrounding it.

I don’t know what is my own mind, what is others. I do know that I want the world to love me but can only seem to find respect instead of friendship. I have yet to know much of the world, have yet to become my own, and does this compilation of people who I am mean I am no one at all?

The day breaks against my eyes and I wonder if the witches are gone, if the hours of sleepless nightmares of the waking mind have been at last vanquished. I sing the words to a half forgotten song from years ago that has drifted into my mind.

“Hello, my old heart, how have you been? How is it being locked away? Well, don't you worry, 'cause in there, you're safe, and it's true, you'll never beat, but you'll never break.”

The words of a band my mother once played in our kitchen, they were called the Oh Hellos. The tune is lost in my voice, but the meaning lingers. Have I locked my heart away? ‘Cause it’s true that I am safe, but it's true that I am standing alone.

Alone, I have learned, isn't lonely, it is simply a state where we are in search of something more, more than what we have in front of us. I often think of childhood, the sparkling dresses in a box that we would rummage through, crowns placed upon our heads by each other’s hands. The light danced across our sequins in the sunlight as we took chalk into our fingers and left marks on our sidewalks, pastels upon our palms.

There was nothing to everything then, when our chubby fingers would intertwine as we laid on our backs in the grass, whispering the meaningless secrets I can’t any longer find someone to tell.

I twist the ends of my hair around my pointer finger and stare at my walls I have covered with pictures and postcards, where I stood upon my bed balancing with poster puddy in hand to stick them there. And I want there to be an easy path, one I can take down without scratching up my life, a way to replace without ruining.

I know the world will begin again, monotonous against the free spirit of the soul that wanders in the morning hours. I wonder if this is life. I wonder if this is the way the world feels, as if you have been spun around on a carousel and told to pick the straightest path forward, when everything is spinning and every decision is wrong. Am I supposed to feel like so much of our choices are the choice between an arm and a leg to be severed from me? I lie awake in the early hours with the hope that the world will stop spinning and I will be able to take a step forward instead of stumbling back, but all I see in the darkness is the reasons why each path is the wrong one, all I see is staines upon my past with a black light.

When I stand up my arm feels numb from sleeping on it, I shake it to regain feeling. I stare out the window and see that a car is driving down my street, the world is beginning, as I must as well.