Once again, it is just me, alone, in a tiny room with white walls.
White.
That is the only colour I can see as I look around. It mocks me and dances in my face, cackling as I lie down on white bed-sheets. They’ve even given me a white pillow and a white comforter, now faded to a dusky grey. They think I can’t see violent reds, vivid greens and sky blues anymore, but I can. All I do is close my eyes, and I’m in a beautiful garden, a secret garden that nobody else will ever visit. It’s my own, where butterflies soar and I’m happy, a garden where Mother, Father and myself sit around a little round table, drink tea and juice, eat sandwiches with the crusts cut off and talk, like we’re a real family. We’re all together again.
They’ve dressed me in a white cotton pyjama suit. It’s ugly, it’s plain, and it’s drab, but I do not protest. I’m their little mannequin. I simply stare straight ahead and ignore the soothing words of the nurse. I don’t need to be soothed. It’s so easy to block the droning out. I simply retreat into my little private world, and suddenly it’s not a white pyjama suit. I don’t know how many years behind the times I am, but I see the last strains of Milan that I remember from some distant time, before I was shut up here. I see sleek black and white clothing, silhouettes of beauty and glamour, and models strutting down runways to All That Jazz. And I see myself, beautiful.
I can only imagine what I look like now. My skin’s faded to an almost translucent shade, and limp black strands of hair frame my bony face. I must look like Morticia from the Addams Family. At least, I might know exactly if they’d let me have a mirror. I look at my hands, and they’re pale. The nurse croons at me, asks me why my gelatin is untouched. Why my milk is still there, and would I like more pudding? I shake my head no. Gelatin, pudding and milk? How utterly Dickensian, I think. I almost like the feeling of starving, and fading away. One day, the nurse will enter, and find me gone. Not escaped – gone. Faded. Vanished.
One day, I shall be somewhere where I sing on the street corners, dance the tango in the moonlight, nibble on sweet chocolate cream pies and Swiss chocolate with a handsome escort on my arm, and sleep on a cloud, to the music of harps and ethereal angel voices. One day.
But that day, is not tomorrow.
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