Within Walls

Strains of unfamiliar music slipping through the silence of early morning... she shivers a little in the cold of her room, then looks at the blankets bunched up on her bed. She can still sense the warmth that she left there, the breath of her body collected during her sleep, comforted by the softness that encased her while she dreamt.

At 12mn she had woken up, and had felt the need to do something other than sleep. Still half-awake, she put on some music from a band she barely knew, and settled down to read.

Now almost 2am, she turns from staring at her bed and finishes off the last of the fruit juice she had prepared for herself. She stands up and goes to the sink, where the unwashed plates from the other night's dinner still sat there, untouched.

Untouched... that's what the world felt like at that moment. Her world at least. It was hanging there in the air, motionless, caught between the white walls of her room. She could imagine the stale smell of it in her nose, could feel the tired fabric of it rubbing against her skin.

She leaves her glass on the sink and goes back to her table. She looks at the book she left there, the page she had last been reading slightly folded at the corner. But she doesn't pick it up.

She goes on sitting there, doing nothing. Her eyes move randomly, then settle on the still-unopened box of Godiva chocolates on her desk, given to her as a gift.

She remembers herself smiling as her officemate handed her the elegant brown box, held closed with a thin strip of faintly shining ribbon. And she also remembers how, foolishy, she had felt special at that moment, even with knowing that all her other female officemates had received the same brown box of sweets, tied around with the same shiny piece of ribbon.

She laughs a little bit to herself... at herself. Those seconds of simple happiness were now sitting there in front of her, still unopened, still untasted. She wonders if, when she put one of the chocolates to her tongue, the stillness of the room would disappear, if the air around her would finally start moving.

Tires crunching on cold concrete... the sound of it makes her turn her gaze to her curtained windows. She rarely opened those curtains, rarely wanted to look at what was happening behind them. But she remembers one morning when she pulled them back, and was surprised to find a white world staring back at her. It was snowing... and she was smiling.

The cold was sharp. She held her hand up to catch the falling ice. She blew white vapors of hot breath. She felt the snow-covered pavement pushing against her feet. She drank in the warmth of a hot cup of coffee held between her hands. She watched flakes of whiteness gather on her black coat.

She shivers again, and frowns at the immovable cold that seemed to have sunk itself in her room. She thinks that maybe, if she moved the curtains aside, the windows would let in warmth and make the cold go away, just like it did on that day long ago.

But she shakes her head, and stands up on her wooden floor. She turns off the music and switches off the lights. Slowly, she makes her way to her bed. She finds her pillow in the dark, and lays her head on it. She pulls the blankets tightly around her, and closes her eyes to the silence of her life.