Work Text:
This small room hosts a gathering of unlike minds.
From all corners of the universe they come, bringing with them their foreign perspectives of the world. Conversation wafts around my head as a stiff breeze might– it is wild and stormy with ideas, most of which unfamiliar and new. There is talk of politics and of past civilizations, knowledge lost to me from years of attention placed in other things more important to me than most others. The humidity of the outdoors spreads, reaching its hands into the room and wrapping its sweaty palms around each of my friend’s bodies, suffocating them gently. Breath hangs heavy in the air like a too-hot blanket, weighty with the heat of the sun’s sweat and a long day of hard work. People form small pockets of intermingling conversation, creating hot fronts and cold fronts, which combine in the epicenter of the room and shake the walls with their united thunder.
This off-white wasteland of a room has seen many souls come and go. Small, rectangular patches of missing paint across the walls are the only markers which they have left behind– small reminders of their existences, which none of us will come to know. One of these patches of missing paint will be mine one day, when the last poster’s tape has been removed from the bricks on the wall, its sticky fingers tearing off its last reminder to keep for itself. Command strips may become children someday, somewhere in between the end of spring and the dawning of the summer, clutching scraps of the wall close to their chests like stuffies and never letting go. The desks have seen thousands of books before mine, just as the drawers have seen entire eras of fashion pass. They hold their past tenants’ memories too– invisible as they may be, they linger behind, and if you cross your fingers and close your eyes tight and wish with all your might, you might see the illusion of an old student’s pair of Keds sneakers. I think about these things a lot– the impermanence of this little room, and of these little friends, and of the paint on the wall, and of me. We are only here for so long.
And yet the sound of their laughter reminds me that they are still here with me, and that I am still here with them. The symphony of overlapping voices and waving arms tickles my ears– they become my own personal 10-person chamber choir and provide me with an electric avant-garde performance of speech and screams. I listen to them, and they listen to me. I am reminded that I am also a voice of the choir, and my voice rings out, soft yet still integral to the orchestra. These walls will remember me, too, as they will remember my caravan long after we have left, and someday it will look back on the song we made together with a smile made of drywall and mortar. A bed creaks, a microwave hums, and someone crinkles a bottle of water in their hands as they lift it to their lips to wet their dried tongue. When more people filter in, the performance reaches a sudden crescendo, and then relaxes in time.
The final movement of the piece that we made together is a subdued, quiet one. The door creaks open in regular intervals until eventually, I am the only one here. There is no more noise, but their laughter still echoes in my ears and rattles my mind. The bed which fosters me ushers me to lie down with its red comforter, like I am a bull in a pen, and it is my matador. The silence which permeates the space is louder than the boisterous caravan of characters that have just departed, and eventually I am reminded of where I am. In the end, this room will not remember me; it will not remember the casino chip magnets which I stick onto the freezer, and it will not remember the fake plants I place on the shelves to make this white square feel like a home. When I am gone, the only colors which remain will be white and brown– how sad for the furniture and for the paint to be left with no one, when it has provided me with everyone I could have ever wanted.