My Bedroom Is A Lantern
My bedroom is a lantern, warm and yellow. It is the beach during a sunset, when the ocean laps at the shore. It is a group of friends lit by a lazy bonfire as they turn to welcome me. It is my favorite dress, familiar, and flattering.
The walls embrace me every night and in the morning they nudge me gently awake. It’s a fuzzy feeling, this warmth. “Come to bed,” the walls say. “You are safe here,” They say.
The floor is a different creature. It is not so forgiving. It is not so warm. There is carpet that used to be cream, now spotted with tea and wrinkled where the house fought back. Clothes are littered like fallen soldiers. Forgotten? Wounded?
“Look at the mess you’ve created,” The floor says. “Look how you’ve neglected me.”
I remember the carpet scratching my cheek. I remember my eyes wet and a wrenching pain.
But that was a long time ago.
Above my desk a hand painted duck stares at me like a fly on the wall, one eye rimmed in red, a memento from my second grade teacher. She tutored me in reading, listening patiently as I stumbled over every word. Mrs. Davis? Or Mrs. David? I only remember brown hair and tortoise glasses. The duck once hung in her classroom until I told her I loved it. Then it was my red eyed duck. “Pay attention,” the duck says. “You can do this,” It says.
Above the duck, A calendar, unchanged since August, sits. A ‘To Do’ list is scrawled across it in a purple pen. Some days are scratched out, others circled. Months ago I was here in this exact chair and I meant to do something. The calendar bears the weight of my goals. “Hello? Do you remember me?” I hear it nagging, “You are behind and will never catch up.”
That notion strikes a pang of anxiety in me.
It occurs to me that maybe my room is more like a landslide vomiting into a canyon, trapping me inside rather than a calm summer night. The walls dim. Various piles of books play Jenga on my desk and nightstand. There’s a footprint on the ceiling. How? Maybe it happened during my parkour phase. Or maybe it happened during a fit of rage when I was fourteen, that had me flinging a doc marten toward God.
But that was a long time ago.
Polaroids from an ex boyfriend are smothered beneath a Korean dictionary, blanketed in dust and regret. They are hidden, but not forgotten. When I lift them I can hear shouting. “How could you do this to me?” They scream. “You’re so cold,” They whisper.
Those words punch the last breath of warmth from me and cast my walls in shadow. I am a candle snuffed out. I am a microwave humming. I am static on the TV. I am shame and guilt and anger and
I push away from the desk. My chair struggles across the carpeting, but my legs carry me faithfully to my bed where the sheets gather me up and reassure me. Tented over me, they are yellow like the walls and my favorite dress and the sunset. They are cool and fresh. My mother has the same gentle touch. “You can hide a while longer,” My bed says. “You are safe here,” The sheets say.