You don’t notice it until the paint dries: the ceiling isn’t a crisp line. It’s hard to tell if the green stretches too high or the white reaches too low, but it’s off. It could be charming. It could be the imperfection that makes this all feel homey. More likely, it will be forgotten and slip into the background noise like the 1 p.m. train whistle.
Does anyone look up there except when they are in bed and unable to sleep? What if these almost imperceptibly squiggly lines are the last thing I see in this world? I’m not dying. Just asking the inevitable question. When my family leans in for one last bit of wisdom, will I ask them to please repaint my bedroom?
I love this color, but paint never stays the same over the years. You can’t touch up with the original paint because it’s not the same as that original paint plus life experience. This house is less than half my age, and we have lived here for over half of its time. I had thought of moving but realized the ceiling probably isn’t straight anywhere (in my price range), and the undiscovered problems may be worse than the problems I have known. Every year I settle deeper into the foundation.
For the first part of this house’s life (and well before it was a twinkle in some builder’s eye), I was a serial renter. I never changed batteries in fire alarms or filters in furnaces. I was a series of short stories instead of a novel. I blame it on youth. When you can pack up your life in a day, the ratio between hassle and adventure is much more favorable.
But inevitably you own couches and tall dressers, and staying sounds better and better. All of this, of course, hangs on a person like a persistent middle-age spread: soft and comfortable until you catch it at the wrong angle. Oh, to be youthful and see the world! Oh, to be still and actually see the world.
The sunset changes the color of the walls ever so slightly—the Whipped Avocado is more of a Fresh Avocado (deeper at the edges and so mysterioso). I’m not sure which I like better. (Not that it matters. It’s as finite as I am—more so, really.) My kids think I’m asleep, so they sneak in like it’s past curfew, illustrating why they never got away with it in their misspent youth. When I open my eyes they lean in, all anticipation.
Whatever you do when I’m gone, I say, don’t repaint the bedroom.
Marianne Hales is a poet, essayist, and playwright living in Springville, Utah. She has been published in Dialogue, Segullah, OyeDrum, and the Hong Kong Review. She is honored to influence writers at Brigham Young University and Western Governors University and co-founded Provo Poetry, a non-profit that brings poetry into the community in unusual ways, and Speak for Yourself Open Mic. She is also a member of the Rock Canyon Poets and the inaugural cohort of the MoLitLab’s Book Mentorship program.
Art by Paul Klee.
Further Reading
 | A guest post by
|