Room: A Character Study

It’s a corner room, large and square; set above the garage, it’s too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. There’s a day bed tucked into the corner beneath the window that looks down on the driveway. It’s never made.

None of the furniture matches. The nightstand’s a distressed blue. The mirror on the old chest of drawers is set at a permanent tilt, bouncing images at the ceiling. There are two bookcases, crammed full; piles of books obscure the natty maroon carpet. Old notebooks and scraps of paper have been thrown and dropped haphazardly – research, notes, and aborted ideas gotten down on paper and abandoned.

CDs, DVDs, and old VHS tapes overflow their wooden racks, and the open suitcase taken on vacation months ago serves as a laundry basket. Pens, pencils, and black hair ties are scattered liberally across every available surface, sharing space with porcelain miniatures, yarn dolls, and figurines. A doll from France sits side by side with a music box that can no longer be wound and candles set in every conceivable type of holder; a Navajo horsehair vase shares space with a figurine from Korea. There’s a papasan chair sharing the corner opposite the bed with a computer, and a prayer rug from Saudi Arabia rests in front of the closet.

The walls are covered with shelves and posters; a calendar hangs on the back of the door, turned to the wrong month. The shades on the windows don’t match. Masks, tooled in leather, peer down from hooks in the walls and ceiling; a glass Coke bottle brought back from Spain holds the desiccated shell of a beetle, waiting to be flushed away. Nail polish bottles have been sitting undisturbed so long their contents have separated – colored slush at the bottom and clear liquid on top. A wooden jewelry box collects dust on the cedar chest, adorned with seashells found on early-morning beaches.

There are a few photos, all a little out of date. Most are loose rather than framed; their backs are blank. They are gifts, treasures, memories –

They are me.