Love Letter to the Walls
Photo by Heather Suarez
The transition from summer to fall always brings a profound sense of change. It’s when the winter chill has not yet made a home inside your bones, but the summer warmth no longer flows through your bloodstream. It’s also the time when my bedroom takes on a new name — “my childhood bedroom” — as I step into my next chapter. I wanted to leave the place I will mourn more than I will miss with a proper send off, one the walls deserve.
To be recited to the walls, the floor and ceiling all at once:
This is a love letter to you. It’s a complex love that holds bitter resentment and tender care in each palm. You have witnessed every part of me. Every version of myself until now has been splattered across your walls, trapped in these pictures, embedded into the carpeted floor. They hold the parts of me I no longer care for, no longer want and no longer need. I have ripped myself apart in front of the mirror and buried the pieces under the floor. The carpet that holds the dirt and grime of my forgotten self; lost versions that are so close to the surface, I could rip each brown strand up and end up facing only my reflection.
I sat in the bed and let life pass me by as I stared at your white walls. I was caged in, tied to each bedpost. I resented you for holding me captive, even as I never tried to leave. I grieve who I could’ve been if I left, and move the bed from one wall to the other in order to forget.
It is here that I fell out of love with myself. The mirrors reflected a sallow face back to me; my outsides reflected my insides. Soulmates, after all, mirrors of each other. You watched me slowly fall apart — watched as I slept for hours, woke, cried, stared into nothing, felt nothing, felt pain, slept. Shook as I reached for a bitter shot of espresso. Cried because I shook. Witnessed the loss and grief of being betrayed by my body as it gave into my mind.
I do to myself as I do to the plants along your windowsill. I forget nourishment, prolong healing. I tell myself, tomorrow, I’ll patch up the wounds. You heard my excuses and stared back at me, blankly.
I turned my face away in embarrassment at these versions of myself, while you left flowers at their graves. You have always accepted me before I ever could.
It is here that I fell in love with myself. Your candlelit walls watched me dance to jazz and bask in romance. The Christmas lights threw purple hues across the ceiling, in tune with how my hips moved to the sounds of 2000s pop. The mirrors reflected eyes overflowing with adoration, as I traced my bottom lip and the birthmark that sits below my ribs. You have watched me feel beautiful and unstoppable; seen me fully laughing, doubled over gasping for breath as giggles bubbled up from my throat. You have watched me love, and smile as I was loved in return. I held joy on my tongue, and you tasted it with me.
You are everything to me. You are the safe haven that I could mourn and miss for the rest of my life, for it has been you who wrapped me up and held me in your stiff embrace. It was you who soothed my aching joints through the growing pains. You, the safe haven that I could burn. Burn, in order for you to forget who I am, terrified of how much you know. Burn, in hopes that who I was would burn with you, despite how I would gather all your ashes, build them into new walls and breathe life into my charred past selves. You are everything I have been, everything I will never fully be again.
With love, forever sitting in your exquisite cage.