I Am The Bookcase “Mamma? Why is that boy over there bald?” the boy was saying. “Garry it’s rude to stare.” No no stare all you want, I thought peeking from my window. This is the most human intercourse I get until nanny pulls me further into the gloomy maze of doors that holds me within her bird like clutches. I stared at the boy. I stared as if I were the sledge hammer and he the water mellon. Smashing his insides with my eyes but they kept moving along outside where I could not go. I slid down to the grey floor with it’s grayness staring up blankly to me like a dead corpse’s eye. I stared at the wall with its wooden bookcase all the way up. Big cold and wooden. The whole house looked like a home that had been long since forgotten. Like a small cat that no longer received any love. A thing without love? That’s what I am. I am the thing where there’s no love or hope. The thing without place or reason. I am that old book you opened once with purpose and interest that was set aside and forgotten, never opened but once. I am this house, I am the bookcase. Forgotten not loved. I stared at the bookcase, and I thought. The bookcase feels the same way I do, I know this because I see. The bookcase is full, full of knowledge of truth. This bookcase holds thousands of letters of pages. Not one of these volumes of lonesome purpose has ever been opened when I have been here and there has been very little time that I was not here. I am part of the house for I never leave. I am a bookcase. I lean back and close my eyes. I must sleep because then I wake up in another grey room in the house. I know it is not the same room for the bookcase is no longer there. In it’s place is a painting and there is no longer a window. The rest of the room is lavishly decorated like most of the house but it couldn’t be more of pure and total discomfort if it tried. The painting was of children playing, laughing it is very dull and hideous. I hate it. Artful perfected strokes form their way across the page, there are bright colors so vivid and bright. It all looks like mud. Mud because it melds with the place it was put in this wood and brick cage of mine. Nanny enters, with a beam of contrasting light behind her. “This.” Says my warden gesturing to the contrasting light “is Esmeralda.” “Hello.” She has a stark linen dress that flounces just below the knee and perfect blue bows in her hair that falls in a wild mane of rings round her face. The mane is a color trapped between mud and sunlight and her eyes are a dull blue that wavers lightly in the rooms depressing light. Nanny bows and leaves. I stare at the girl with disinterestedly fogged eyes. She blinks like some sort of night bird back. Then she sharpens her gaze to a point. She shimmies her eyes from my face to feet and back. Turning up her nose she breathes shortly out crossing her arms. “If your not going to say anything I’m going to leave.” She swivels round her heel to the door. “And that painting is dreadful.” The door bangs shut behind her. I sink my seat. It’s been more than a day maybe less before Esmeralda re enters. Her dress has been painted green but is otherwise unchanged and her ribbons have remained constant. She marches into the room and I react as if she hadn’t. She stomp stomp stomps her way right up into my nose and bends over till all I can see is muddy hair and dull blue eye. “Do you talk?” No. I am a bookcase. “Good. Papa says you’re dying.” I say nothing by way of conformation. “Papa also says I have to be nice to you. He says we need to be friends.” She stops and looks from my face to feet again. “Do you want to be friends with me?” I turn my head to one side then the other. She disappears and does not return. I stay in my prison lying in desperate wait of the one event that can free me from these hallowed halls of grey. I do not see Esmeralda again. I think about her sometimes but not often. I do not care. One day I am older and still I have not been allowed out from the grayness. Esmeralda comes back to see me. She sits on the edge of the chair facing mine and tells me of #life beyond the grayness, she tells me she understands me now and it’s okay. She forms words so I don’t have to. I feel blessed. This is the only time in which I was able to let the grayness be grayness. I was not part of the grayness I was me I was free. I played as a child should and forever each day it was only us. Never anyone else. She would laugh and I would be tight lipped and happy. I was so drawn and so awed by the sheer whiteness of it all I forgot the pain because it didn’t matter anymore. Oh how wrong I was how very very wrong. Esmeralda could not stay forever every day she did not have nothing to do. she would have to not come back at time. But she came back always again and we would have our forever again. Soon though the playing became hard, and she had to leave and not come back for a bit. It was not suposed to be long. She said it would not be long. She lied. It was during this time that the event every man waits for began for me. She was not there when it began nor there when it ended or anywhere in between. It was on my last day that I spoke my first word. It was not easy, but I wanted to. I needed to. “Eh-zi.” ************************* A girl sat on a stool her long curly auburn hair fell down past her shoulders her brilliant blue eyes filled with tears as she red the letter informing her of her friends death. She held it to her heart and wept. “Papa how awful!” She cried. “You knew he was dying dear, no one could have done anything.” “All these people!” She cried. “All these people see the world blandly but I saw he made me see it right! I could name I thousand people that should fill his place in the grave!” “Esmeralda! Esmeralda my dear! Don’t say such things!” “No. No, it’s true and please” She swallowed and looked her father in the eye “call me Ezie.” She looked down at the letter and smiled through her tears. Don’t worry dear friend she thought we had forever and someday in the distance we’ll have it again.