the devil never sleeps alone

i awoke to the vision of clothing strewn across my bedroom floor, half-empty cardboard boxes jutting at odd angles atop offensively subtle brown carpet. the white walls of this apartment drive me mad; they scream at me with their emptiness, and i long to fill the room with color. anything to fill this void.

i fight off mediocrity like a loyal thane fights for his lord. the hollow faces of happy, youthful women on magazine covers mock me as i add a fifth tablespoon of coffee to the white, flower-shaped filter. furniture that is mismatched in a decidedly unhip manner frustrates me, and a pang of remorse stabs at me for this moment of ingratitude. adulthood isn't supposed to be like this. i resist the urge to turn on the television. the thought of watching people live exciting urban lives instead of actually living mine brings my mind to its knees. i bow out gracefully and choose to return to my bedroom, its white walls and empty air a reminder of all i lost.

funny how things can make you feel as if you're worth something, as if this void could be filled with beautiful bookcases or bedlinens or baking sheets. i try to look at these white walls as possibility instead of a constant reminder of my shortcomings as a woman, a wife, a lover. it would be easy enough to paint over them, a fresh, smooth surface glossing over the emptiness and making everything bright again, clean again, alive and new.

potential. latent, tension-filled potential sleeps beneath my sheets and crouches in the corners of this room. the bright colors i imagine exist somewhere, and i will reach them, even if it kills me. in my world, there is color and light and earth to walk in, feet bare, soil soft, the taste of salt on my lips and a heart that expects nothing. in that world, my mind is calm and empty and i can think clearly; sentences do not run together and tangle like a ball of multicolored yarn, but instead they flow from salty lips and consume the listener, engaging and enthralling and transforming me as the spool that produces the colors of thread, light and easy and simple and clean.