As
the Sun Grew Large in the Glass Shapes of the Door You’d Always Known
Amanda Su Wilgus
If you’d had your way, you’d still be dancing under the rainbow stripes flitting across the carpet as the sun grew large in the glass shapes of the door you’d always known. You wouldn’t build houses, large empty houses clamoring for children in all the extra rooms, with your swimming pools shimmering away in their calm oblivion, also waiting, silently, for the day the children would come. Your houses were quiet homages to the big open spaces you’d once explored and then explored again. You couldn’t quite replicate the long hallways filled with their fear or dread or strange expectation. You tried hanging paintings to hide bare walls. These walls held no secrets and could tell no lies.
Your walls were frank, open and honest, though brutally so. It hurt your eyes in ways you couldn’t see to look so starkly at yourselves. Your paintings depicted landscapes with roads and meadows intersecting one another at bleakly metaphorical crossroads of life. You stared approvingly at these paintings, reminiscing blankly on a past you’d never had or a future you certainly wouldn’t find. You planted saplings and watched them daily from your windows. You bought furniture, but the sounds of the cushions were too clean and polite, almost embarrassed.
You stood, mostly.
When we came, we stood, mostly. We smiled wistfully at your walls and commented lightly on the big open spaces, but as we walked down long hallways we heard the voices of children laughing and screaming in all the empty, extra rooms.
We heard them because when we came, we saw ourselves in your walls beneath the paintings. You talked animatedly and laughed all night long. The food was excellent, and for once, your kitchen smelled full and used. After, we returned home and saw spots of our wallpaper turning beige—near yellow, peeling at the edges. Our embittered walls whispered damning secrets and told outright lies. Our cushions breathed sighs of relief as we remembered their earlier, more polite days. From our windows, we saw our trees grown thick and sturdy, kneeling beneath a waning moon.
You, too, saw these things from your guarded perch within spacious houses, petrified at unshakable truths creeping slyly from the recesses of blank lawns, and you promised yourselves that you, an unbreakable You, would not creak. You would not groan. You would not sigh beneath the pressures of a world upon you. You were stain-resistant, water-resistant and wrinkle-resistant.
You would not wilt.
You defied gravity and time.
You had planned, and made grand plans, but--
you hadn’t meant for it to be so soon.
Amanda Su Wilgus
If you’d had your way, you’d still be dancing under the rainbow stripes flitting across the carpet as the sun grew large in the glass shapes of the door you’d always known. You wouldn’t build houses, large empty houses clamoring for children in all the extra rooms, with your swimming pools shimmering away in their calm oblivion, also waiting, silently, for the day the children would come. Your houses were quiet homages to the big open spaces you’d once explored and then explored again. You couldn’t quite replicate the long hallways filled with their fear or dread or strange expectation. You tried hanging paintings to hide bare walls. These walls held no secrets and could tell no lies.
Your walls were frank, open and honest, though brutally so. It hurt your eyes in ways you couldn’t see to look so starkly at yourselves. Your paintings depicted landscapes with roads and meadows intersecting one another at bleakly metaphorical crossroads of life. You stared approvingly at these paintings, reminiscing blankly on a past you’d never had or a future you certainly wouldn’t find. You planted saplings and watched them daily from your windows. You bought furniture, but the sounds of the cushions were too clean and polite, almost embarrassed.
You stood, mostly.
When we came, we stood, mostly. We smiled wistfully at your walls and commented lightly on the big open spaces, but as we walked down long hallways we heard the voices of children laughing and screaming in all the empty, extra rooms.
We heard them because when we came, we saw ourselves in your walls beneath the paintings. You talked animatedly and laughed all night long. The food was excellent, and for once, your kitchen smelled full and used. After, we returned home and saw spots of our wallpaper turning beige—near yellow, peeling at the edges. Our embittered walls whispered damning secrets and told outright lies. Our cushions breathed sighs of relief as we remembered their earlier, more polite days. From our windows, we saw our trees grown thick and sturdy, kneeling beneath a waning moon.
You, too, saw these things from your guarded perch within spacious houses, petrified at unshakable truths creeping slyly from the recesses of blank lawns, and you promised yourselves that you, an unbreakable You, would not creak. You would not groan. You would not sigh beneath the pressures of a world upon you. You were stain-resistant, water-resistant and wrinkle-resistant.
You would not wilt.
You defied gravity and time.
You had planned, and made grand plans, but--
you hadn’t meant for it to be so soon.
