Inside all of us, there is a perfect room.

It is this room that we decorate with all the intricacies of our souls.

Into this room, we place a table and chairs made of rich, deep, dark, wood, that represents our steadfast stability.

We hang a painting upon the wall of this room, one with vividness, beauty, and which invokes a sense of fascination with the world.   We appreciate the creativity, the sense of awe needed to visualize the image.  We love the wide eyed appreciation that comes with skills that we didn’t pursue in ourselves.

Into this place we give ourselves a bed.  We afford ourselves a respite.  We choose a sanctuary for our consciousness. We decide the rigidity, we cater the size to our fitfulness, we add pillows to our expectations.  We afford space to a potential cohabitator. We long for and selectively decide for our wakelesness.

We pick light bulbs, and lamp shades, and accents, and closet doors, and nightstands, and paint on the walls, and the blinds, and the carpet, and the drapes, and the infinitesimally inconsequential things that seem important to fill out the room.

We fill this place with everything we desire.  As a centerpiece, we place a fragile, delicate, vase on the dresser that houses the attire that shields our naked insecurities from the world.  It is pure alabaster, and upon its surface shimmers the pulsing image of a heart.

Occasionally, we allow someone into our room.

We long for someone to see our perfect place, and we want them to feel that is similar to their own.

We think that the painting on the wall might bear a striking resemblance to the artistic piece in their own room.

We think that the bed might feel comfortable to them, and the pillows might offer the same cushioned peace.

We believe that they may walk through our perception of bliss, and decide to stay.

Then we allow a person to rearrange our perfect room.   We let them make changes into the sacred place.  We allow them to add things to our idea of happiness. We shift the placement of furniture. We buy new paintings.  And we add new amenities and carpeting.

The vase, it stays in its place.

Flowers are added to it, die, and are taken away.

It becomes dusty, and ignored in the face of new room improvements, but the heart still pulses brightly.

In time, it comes to house the memories and experiences with that special person we let into the room.

One day, it is bumped from its perch.

In slow motion, and in intensely draw out fashion, the vase teeters and sways and eventually falls from its placement.

When it hits the floor, the sound of its breaking is immense, intense, and similar to the cracking of rock or the breaking of an incredibly massive pane of glass.

It lies abjectly destroyed, in the room that was intended to perfectly preserve it.

We stare at the broken pieces, and the ashy memories that are now dusting the carpet.  Compulsively, we start collecting the pieces and make a pile on the dresser.  A search is conducted, and adhesive is found.    We start to glue the pieces back together.

Days pass, and then weeks, and we keep trying to reconstruct the vase.  Weeks pass and then months, and still we attempt to make the shattered remains whole.  Months pass, and then years, and we finally realize, the vase will never be the same.  It will never look like its original form.  It will never hold flowers, trinkets, or memories again.

So we gather up the remains, and place them into a small, flimsy, box.  We leave the box on the curb, and travel to the store, to buy a new vase.

Humbly yours,

J