Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
She opened her eyes and looked around her bedroom. Everything seemed pretty much the same. The faint morning light creeping in through the small openings of the drawn curtains. A pile of yesterday’s clothes on the floor, most of it having fallen off the velvety wingback chair she picked up at a garage sale somewhere.
Everything was the same. She looked down her doona covered body as she lay in bed; the same doona she always had; the same doona that used to warm his body as well; the same one they often hid under avoiding sunlight, prolonging the blissful state of darkness. The same doona that was quickly thrown off in their moments of passionate love making.
She reached to the bedside table silencing the alarm clock before it even went off. She couldn’t stand alarm clocks.
Slowly, she sat up, still in bed, cross legged, surveying the room, suspicious of its sameness. Two windows, one view. She fixed her eyes on the tall boy blocking the second window, trying to see through it. She can’t even remember what part of the garden that window looked out to.
Thoughtlessly, she got up. Puts both hands on the tall-boy and tries to move it. But it doesn’t budge. It’s her grandmother’s, antique tall boy, stuffed with god knows what. Must weigh a tonne.
She is angry; angry at the tall boy, angry with all the stuff in it, angry with her grandmother who burdened her with its care. It must be removed. She must free that window. Insanely she starts pulling out drawers one by one, not caring what falls out, what breaks.
She pushes again, and it slowly gives way. She pushes more and more until it’s as far away from the window as she can push it. She pulls the blind up and there is the window. The glass hasn’t been washed in a while and the view is a bit cloudy. But she can see. There is more to see from the two windows.
The room is different. She is not sure how, but it’s different. She knows it’s her eyes. For the first time she is seeing things she’s never seen before. Different light, different shadows, a different view. Sadness suddenly overwhelms her. Her own eyes had been betraying her without her knowing; so many things remained unseen for so long. But the sadness is quickly replaced by the joy of newness. Freeing the window, has given her new eyes.
Her room is very different. No tall-boy and no alarm clock.