Walls

 

 

Their legs were a tangle under the sheets,

Both faced the same direction,

Their bodies mirrored each other as if staples in a fresh pack.

 

She was asleep.

He didn’t bother trying;

Sleeplessness was a matter of course now.

 

He laid awake trying to forget the noise coming from those walls,

That noise that that clung unto them, keeping him from sleep.

He tried to paint over it with the sound of her breathing.

But like old paint, the noise clung just beneath.

He ignored it.

Again.

 

‘Twas better that way;

Better to paint over it now and rediscover the pernicious sound of the past,

just beneath at a later date,

Once it had begun to seep through the fresh coat of feigned ignorance.

That new coat that now sounded just like his wife’s breath.

 

And so it would begin again.

He would stare at those walls tomorrow

And wonder at how the old paint so quickly came through.

“I thought it would last longer this time.”

He would say,

Knowing in the end that it never did last quite as long as he thought

And lately, the poor quality of the coats lasted less

And less

And less.

 

It was not an attempt at escape he thought.

“No”

he told himself

“It was just postponing”

“I am not trying to forget, I am not trying to escape”

“I can always buy better paint”

 

He just needed more time.

Like he needed the previous night

Or the night before.

Or the one before that, so many years ago.

 

Just a little more time,

“I’m not ready yet.”

 

Their legs were a tangle under the sheets.

Like a long thick braid keeping hair from flowing freely in the wind.

A braid of Comfort and Fear;

Fear to untangle, fear to let go,

Fear to scrape those walls clean and face the noise until it became music.

Fear to start, fear to end, and fear to not wait any longer.

Fear that laid just beneath that new coat of paint.

Fear to be pressed into a new stack of paper

Fear to flow loosely in the air.

 

Morning came before sleep again.

She stirred and rose,

She kissed his lips,

And left for work.

 

He laid there alone,

Alone with his walls.

Alone with the old paint already seeping through.

 

The sounds that were not music, crawling,

Clinging onto his walls.

 

The small disappointments,

All the promises not kept,

All seeping through the paint that was not quite dry yet.

 

He escaped the room,

Escaped to work,

Keeping busy drowned the noise, kept him far from the walls.

He dreaded going back to those perpetually unfinished walls.

If he went back he would have to look again,

To paint again,

To get tangled and pressed like a staple onto his wife again.

To not fear again.

 

One fresh coat of paint after the other,

So passed the time, days at first, then months,

And maybe even years would have gone by if… If…

 

If he had not visited his father first.

 

On a warm summer day he went to see his father,

Not for advice on how to paint,

Obligation led him there.

Obligation always led him there.

 

He noticed something this time,

A smell or a sound perhaps?

 

In his father’s room he sat,

Listening to the same stories again.

Answering the same questions again.

A pleasantry here, a question there, and…

 

There was a smell;

 

The smell of fresh paint.

 

He looked around his father’s room,

Sunlight shone through a window,

Bathing the room in orange and red and yellow.

The walls of the room were well painted,

Freshly painted.

A fine job his dad had done.

There were no blemishes or spots of drying paint like in all his rooms.

There were no signs that there had ever been thousands of coats on those walls.

Most curious of all,

There was no noise.

 

He smiled,

With tears in his eyes, he hugged his dad and left.

 

He went back.

Back to his home.

Back to his wife.

Back to his room.

Back to the walls.

 

That night they did not get tangled under the sheets.

While she slept, he sat upon the bed;

He was cold, uncomfortable, and afraid.

He looked at those taunting walls and before he began painting,

He remembered his dad’s elegant room,

The room with freshly painted walls and nothing seeping through them,

The room that looked brand new,

The room that looked as if it was only painted once.

He thought of his father,

Laid down his brush,

And let the music carry him to sleep.