This Room

I think this is an empty room.
It feels that way; dark and dank and quiet.

There is no chatter.
No grand thoughts of future possibilities.
No words at all beyond the necessary.
‘Yes please.’
‘No Thankyou.’
‘Pick up your toys.’
This room is quiet.

This room is empty.

I think this is a tired room.
If a room can be tired.
The paint is peeling.
The floor is dirty.
And there is something on the couch that no amount of cleaning product seems able to remove.
But the room is too tired to care; to go beyond more than a rudimentary acknowledgement of its lack luster state

And it’s ok, because this room is empty.

This room is broken.

The foundation seems off kilter. Like something has shifted it and it will never be the same again.
The pictures hang crooked.
There are obvious cracks.
Like a small mammal, poised to take flight, the room waits with an irreverent expectation for the next thing to shake it. Wondering if this will be what breaks it for good.
Exhausted it waits.
Waits to break.

This room is tired.

This room is empty.

This room is busy.

So busy.
Constant movement from side to side, directions and orders from here to there.
Jobs and to do lists.
There is no pause.
No time to stop.
To fix the paint.
To clean the floor.
To scream into the never ending silence that fills all the busy, constant moments.
To let it all go, somehow, somewhere.
Some time.

This room is busy.

There is a little girl.
She lies on a couch, her pallor eerily pale, her eyes sunken.
She is beautiful.
Beyond beautiful.
Hair, soft, and long and wonderfully blonde.
Eyes whose colour defies being named.
Soft, little girl skin, flawless and unmarred in its beauty.

She is beautiful.
And perfect.
And so far from empty that words can not draw the comparison.

She lies, unmoving on that couch.
A victim of a lurgy that will not release its hold.
Tired, and drawn, and incomplete in her perfection.
Her eyes, they look in to the room.
The empty room.
And they draw her out of it.
They can not help but.

Just as she, in turn, draws the little girl in.

There is a light, that flickers.
A candle that burns slightly.
Hesitantly.
Openly.
The little girl is sick, and sad.
And the room, the empty room, notices.
‘This, I feel.’
There is strength, in those words.

Power.

And the light gains strength.
The candle shows other things.
A sick little boy, barely finished his birthday celebrations.
An irrepressible toddler with the face of a pixie and the humour of an imp.
An older girl, healthy, well, and confident.

Him.
The one who makes her heart sing.

And the room, the tired, broken, busy room, is not so empty any more.