Opening the door of my bedroom, I push on the squeaking clench. The sun is shining through the glass, spreading rays of light on the wooden floor like it used to. Even with the window closed, I still can smell the grass my father mowed earlier. Like he used to.
I bring my bag down, obstructing the light with all the stuff inside: wrinkled clothes, unread books, blank notepads. Every item I brought to my new house, far, far from there, in the hopes of feeling a little bit like home. Placed the clothes in the new wardrobe, the books on the new shelves, along with the notepads. Brought a couple plates and my bedside lamp. Under my arm, my favorite jacket.Every time I come back to my parent’s,I bring them back with me like talismans.
As the months went by, I piled my stuff in between those new walls. I knew that in the midst of all that raging chaos there still was by my side, a couple of my artifacts.
A poster on the wall, some pictures by the fridge.
It finally kind of felt like me, a liminal space in which I was merely existing.Look at this kid, she's adulting!
And now sometimes I come by with my bag the floor. I look around this strange room, now whiter than I remember... And where is all my stuff?The books and the clothes,the poster and the photos?
I sit down on this bed which now has a new mattress. I can still feel the broken slats though. They gave up years ago when we would play catch with my big brother and he went all John Cena on me. We never told our parents and when they eventually discovered it, blamed the ominous passing of Time.
It now almost looks like a hotel, with those blank walls and this empty desk. Except I know it isn’t fully the case. Because those walls still bear marks of that time I stepped on the curtains and the bar fell, leaving black scratchings on the side. That ink stain that, despite everything, simply would not let go, along with the holes my ex left in the sheets. And this empty desk has not always been this way, for there were nights when I would stay up during unGodly hours in front of a Word document, scratching my head and bring out my lighter once all souls were dead asleep. The marks of all the youthful shit I have done are and always will be there, somehow. There are memories one simply cannot just scrub away.
And yet, one day I will be gone, and so will they. They exist only in my mind, which even now get lost sometimes. Everything shifts, everyone dies inside only to be born again.
I stare at the same ceiling I used to stare for days in a row and I smile, softly. God knows my younger self would have laughed at me for smoking with my head out the window, all uptight. Lifetimes ago I used to throw whole-ass hot boxing seshes once the clock struck midnight.
Yeah, time has passed. I see it my father’s wrinkles, the plants that have gone dry, or when I walk past this mirror the same way I did when I was sixteen and so fucking naïve. Like a stranger in an old picture.
Is this bedroom still mine?Will my new home ever feel fine?
I am changing faster than weeks go by, sometimes I don’t know what is Home, other times I forget who I am.
And yet Hell knows that none of that matter, for I too, shall one day kneel to the ominous passing of Time.