The faint light born in the bulb is hardly acknowledged, hardly noticed. Hardly anyone recognises that the faint light hovering in the dark indigo of the room descends from the light bulb. It is just there. Exchanging the indigo coloured darkness for a light violet, a pink, a dark red or a gleaming yellow.
A couch is positioned underneath the bulb, wearing a now worn-out emerald green cover. Through the light it seems yellow and a lime green, maybe. On the couch, a body, slightly curved around a book, can be recognised.
A girl. A young girl is reading.
The book is cloaked by her shadow, caused by the little light bulb hanging at her back. The girl does not mind, she is not actually reading. Her thoughts are somewhere else.
The crackling of an old radio can be heard in the background. Classical music. A forgotten dream.
The little girl has one hand resting on the top of the couch, picking at the old cloth, the other hand is clasping the cover of the book, preventing it from closing.
Absentmindedly, the little girl reaches down to her big toe and rips off the end of her toe nail, flicks it carelessly into the air. Into the light, where it falls down again somewhere into the nothingness of indigo. The book closes heavily. She does not bother to open it again, rather, she turns around, facing the couch. She stares into the fabric. There is still a touch of green left on one spot. The rest is a bleached out ochre.
The radio mutes for a second, and then a man starts speaking. She cannot make out one word that he is saying. Without turning around she reaches for the radio, settled on the floor and turns it off. She looks at her wrist. The watch on it shows the time, 12:00 o’clock. Midnight.
She sighs and abruptly, she falls into a deep, peaceful slumber. Tired out worries.
The room is small, small and cramped. And yet, it seems deserted. There is no relationship between the goods and the little girl. This is where she sleeps, where she lies, her thoughts pondering. This room is not her life. She does not need the things that cramp up the little space. They are not hers. They belong to the Planet. She belongs to the light.
Every morning when she wakes up, the bulb is burning away. The light forgotten, drowned in the light of day. The indigo has vanished, replaced by a strike of blue.
The thin brown drapes are never open. They were never open. The light however does not restrain to still shine through them.
Once, this little girl had been a big girl. Once, this little girl had been a happy girl. Once, this little girl had laughed and jumped about. Once, this little girl had been loved. Once, this little girl had loved. She had loved the Sky and the Earth, she had loved the Sun, the Moon, the Rainbows after an exhausted rain, she had loved her mother and her father, she had loved herself.
Maybe, it is the other way around to what I had described earlier. It is not the room that is deserted. But she. Isolated. An isolation that she sought, she found, she got, she needs. Needs to break out of.
« return.