My Room

Pale yellow morning sunlight streams in through the window. The stillness is broken only by distant sounds of kitchen activity; no one else is anywhere near this end of the house.

The floor, warm with the heat of the sun, is covered in linoleum, linoleum of a most magical pattern: fairytales are engraved in it—Aladdin and His Magic Lantern, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, The Three Bears. Each picture is large, larger than both my hands placed together and spread wide on its textured surface, and shimmers in dense pastel jewel tones against the creamy white background. An iconic phrase from each tale winds around its picture, the incomplete phrases plucking that tale’s string and beginning the haunting song that carries me away on its magic carpet. I can’t look at the floor too long at a time, or I’ll end up fragmented into too many different worlds.

My suitcased record player sits on a small table near the door, the gold clasp on the red leatherette box safeguarding Davy Crockett and Please, Mister Custer, my two favorite records, always ready and waiting on the spindle. I have others—the Andrew Sisters, one with sweet children’s songs—but these two are never put away.

Against the same wall stands a small wooden bookcase with two shelves filled with Golden Books, Bugs Bunny comics, coloring books. On top of the bookcase rests my dinosaur set, no longer ever in its box, but always set up with my favorite pets roaming its craggy peaks and valleys or floating on its flat, blue lake. One day, one day of an unwelcome maturity spurt, a shocked epiphany, I realize that, no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I love them, I will never see a dinosaur, will never ride astride the back of a lumbering brontosaurus, never tame a tyrannosaurus rex with the strength of my charm.

I spend many hours stretched out on the floor in front of this entertainment center, no longer in this room, nor even in any recognizable corner of this globe, but in a world of my own devising, my young restless heart soothed with adventures to come, adventures already lived, adventures yet formless and void, but faithfully promising glory and happiness.

I smell toast—I guess breakfast is ready.

Review responses: SiriusFan13: I, too, wish for this linoleum again, and those lazy days tracing its pattern with my fingers.