The Little Yellow Room

Sunlight streamed into her daughter’s room like strips of gold. A sheen of dust glittered on abandoned toys and books. Flowers bloomed and withered away, transforming days into months and months into years – so many years that the turn of neighbors made for faceless strangers and old friends shriveled into a dusty unknown.

Yet, time stopped in this little yellow room.

Sitting in the corner was a little girl, fourteen-years old and trying to navigate the ropes of a world turned cold and unforgiving. She had no guide to help her through treacherous waters so loneliness took reign; and in their darkest hours it whispered to her terrible things. She asked loneliness what had gone wrong, because something must have if 7 billion people could find happiness without her.

She looked up with puffy eyes at her mom standing in the doorway, loneliness taking flight.

With the clear vision of retrospect, the mother looked at a girl she now saw to be terrified, pushing her away not because she was sullen or moody but because she was afraid.

Her mother took a deep breath. As she always did. “Sammy, these things take time. And the world can be mean…I won’t pretend like I know what’s bothering you, but know that there are people in your life who care about you even if it doesn’t seem so in the moment.” She paused, her throat constricting. “Don’t put so much pressure on yourself, to be whatever it is you think the world wants or needs you to be. And remember, always remember, that you’ll never be alone. Because you’ll always have your family to go to. Me. I’ll always be by your side, Sammy, no matter what. So you aren’t alone.”

A genuine smile graced her daughter’s face, and mother and daughter shared a silence of understanding. But the shrill ring of a phone far-away shattered the moment of peace, and the smile melted from her daughter’s face and her own. On the fourth ring – why was it always was the fourth? – her daughter turned the color of ash and in the grave voice of years ago told her what she knew was already coming: “This is Smallfair County School calling. I’m so sorry to tell you this Ms. Steel, but your daughter passed away this morning” and it took all her effort not to crumble on the floor from the shock of a message that no mother could digest let alone live with for the rest of her life. The happy memories she built on top of broken ones burst to reopen the wounds of a heart that would never heal. She was a woman lost too far in regret, and years of failed attempts from friends who wanted her to forget drove them further and further away until she was left alone to wallow in her nightmares.

She walked over to hug her daughter made of sunlight and all things good, her hands desperately grasping for her little girl because no, no, no, it couldn’t be true, and a simple touch would dissipate her nightmare to prove them wrong, help her remember what it felt like to hold her child again so that she could tell her daughter she cared more than she had let on…and if she only had time long past to revisit again, she would give all her love to her and her alone; because time moved too fast and life was too short for her not to, and the universe dealt cruel cards to little girls and boys who felt unwanted. Hands passed through air made important only by manifestations of a mind trapped by an internal ringing of a rainy March day, and the little girl disappeared from empty hands to reveal an even emptier room.

Her mind replayed the same clip in an eternal loop that blended yesterday with today and today with tomorrow. Because when time stopped so had her soul, and re-memories of years ago ruled over the little yellow kingdom. Dust – comprised of despair, loneliness, and most potent of all, regret – threatened to suffocate as she stumbled around to blurry images of a past that would never forget as two rivers carved a familiar path down a face that had been through too much, far too much…and the overflow of tears and pain with years of no release made for a heart that could take no more, until finally, her heart began to beat to a new rhythm: no-more, no-more, no-more.

She carefully cracked open the window. A breath from the outside world tainted the room, and her entire world crumbled into sand to be returned back to the beach her daughter once loved. She could hear the ticking of a clock in a room far-away as time marched forward in the face of time not ready – it was unfair, terribly unfair. Sunlight mixed with dust and tears created for a golden hour of regret, and in tune with the tick-toking of the clock her heart thumped to a similar rhythm of no-more, no-more, NO MORE. The deafening sounds of emotions she would not understand made her mad, and she threw open the window with so much force that dust from the bed and toys flew up and away – how strangely beautiful it all was, she thought, as if the room was once again alive with the presence of the little girl it once loved – from the only home it knew before settling back in its place. A sheen of dust found new residence on an intruder that had thought she could disrupt the peace of this little yellow room. She stood still, as still as the doll that had tumbled to the hardwood floor, collateral damage to an internal war lost. Its golden hair formed puddles near her feet, played with after all these years.

She took one last look – of dead toys and a girl forgotten – before stepping through the window. Sunlight dried her tears, wind carrying dust from her body to be returned back to the little yellow room.