The bedroom is completely sealed. Dust filters in from the windows suspending its form. The room retains a certain staleness, each sheet crease and curvature of the coppery bed frame covered in a thin film of grey fibres. The only movement in the sunlight is the noise of memories. This room is barely mine. Having lived in it for two months I suppose I have a claim to the cluttered bedside cabinet and vanity. But under the piles of my clothes are collections of my grandma’s belts and hats. Her unused suntan lotion and a brittle hairbrush, made for her wisps of hair.

The sheets on the bed were overly greasy as I writhed in the heat of the morning begging to get comfortable. The bed didn’t always feel this unforgiving, solid, like stone. This bed was once home to breakfast with my grandparents, presents, hugs and laughter and I would never have been able to fuck you here. This bed has scored a thousand different sounds.

On the right hand of the bedside was an alarm clock that made tea in the morning, wet steam passing into the air around the narrow spotted mugs, something that astounded my five-year-old imagination. In the shower, I could use the soap that clouded on my fingers – “Imperial Leather Foamburst”. At a touch, the cupboards revealed secret tie compartments and vanities adorned with mirrors, TVs and lights. The room was endless. It was somewhere between fiction and memory.

As I stand in the doorway, I survey the empty room. It has four walls and a textured ceiling, hemming in the dreams I once had in this room. It is the one I leave for university. Not my childhood room, or the bedroom that took me through A-Levels. The last bedroom I lived in before leaving home is the one I spent the day my sister was born. The room my brain began to understand family. In this doorway, with its squeaky hinges and misted window above, I ask myself, is there some symbolism here? A room of my own? A half room. Half mine, half hers?

It’s in the silence that I want to scream. But I close my eyes and let the rickety memory play out that same golden morning. My grandma’s laugh, a melody turning in my mind, its own LP.

(Feature image credited to Hari7902564/ Wikimedia Commons. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bed_Room.jpg)