Walls…

We live in our own prisons and shall succumb to the walls that we are building right now. The mind is trapped and the legs tied. Wish I could show you how I burnt my fingers picking out the right words from the furnace of my head. The eyes are sore from last night and the echo of your words bang against my door every hour or two.

I wish it was a different place. I close my eyes and try and believe that it isn’t my room, that this isn’t my life, that perhaps the little brook still flows under the bridge. Sadly, it is not same anymore. The clock on the wall ticks on and the sound resonates in my head all day long. I hear it even when I am out of the room. It’s almost as if the clock is hung on a nail inside my head and ticks from within me. I would have tore it down had it not been too high for my reach. Tick – Tick – Tick – the booming continues.

Yesterday the colors of the paintings I did years ago melted down. They made a smudge and then quietly flowed off their frames leaving the bare canvas behind. It is surprising how the russet canvas stood naked - ashamed of being alone perhaps. I tried coaxing it to sleep but it just sat there sobbing in a corner. For now, I have draped it with your shirt – remember the one you left in my closet the last time you came over.

I thought I would write to you and I took out the notepad and my pen from the drawer. I didn’t realize it was so long that I had picked up the pen for the ink had dried up and the nib wouldn’t budge. I ended up scratching the page and leaving little scabs of ink all over it. The wounds inflicted so wouldn’t let the page rest either. It kept whining sitting on my drawer all last evening.

Last time I checked the attic, I had found a violin there. Maybe my father or my grandfather used to play it. Maybe it was acquired from a garage sale or a shady flea market off the coast of a forgotten country. I don’t know. Though the strings were intact, it kept making screeching sounds whenever I set my chin on it. Its yelping accused me of raping it. When it grew cold last night, I fed it to the fireplace in my room. You should have seen the way it burnt bright. The little crackles of its wood was perhaps the best music it made in centuries of its existence.

This morning I woke up early. The sun had not risen then. I sat by the edge of my bed. The cinders of the violin in the fireplace were no longer warm. I kept looking out of the window to the urban jungle out there. Maybe it is about time that I scraped the old paint off my windowpane and painted it fresh. I guess I shall do it blue all over again – the color of the sky and your eyes.

Come by and look through it again. I shall brew some coffee and leave you a message on the beach when I go out to buy the paint.