Ongoing Memory.

I used to like you before when you didn’t ask too much from me. Back when we played with bright finger paint on crisp white paper and had naptime. I would sit in the back corner furthest from anyone else, partner less in a hard plastic chair while that white haired lady told us how to behave. We became the best of friends you and I. We would hold hands in the playground and swing silently on those rusty swings and do things that children do. We would do crafts for mom and dad but mostly for mom and I would pretend it was just you and me. The crafts came home but mom and dad never came to see you and me. I didn’t like it when they did because they where dirty and smelled like cigarettes and weren’t very nice where as you were clean and smelled like grandma’s perfume and would never harm me. So I kept you to myself; and sooner or later I kept the crafts to myself too and silently shared them with you. I kept everything about you to myself: the feeling of being around you, the look of you, the smell of you, the sound of you.
I remember you had a piano big and beautiful. The wood glistened in the fluorescent light as soft melodies were sent into the air. I stared at those sparkling white keys enviously. I was forbidden to touch it so I sat there in my little flowered tights on the scratchy blue carpet as close as I could and listened to the sweet music. One day someone got too close; someone who didn’t care for the smooth chestnut coloured piano or the melodious songs it played and they so carelessly spilt juice on the polished wood and the milky white keys. They have since wheeled it away.
They wheeled away the fun and finger paint, the smell of cold apple juice and small muffins. They rolled up that old carpet and the bright art on the walls. They sent away the best parts of you and the good memories were lost in trash bags as they cleaned you out. Nothing was the same.
Our relationship has drastically changed; you are determined in bossing me around like I’m still that kindergartener and I obey out of fear of what will happen if I don’t. You work me until my hands are raw and bleeding and feet are blistered. When I finally fall asleep you rip me out of bed and dress my awkward body in those intolerable clothes. Then you pat me on the shoulder and fill my ears with hollow encouragement like a pep talk for a losing team before a game.
And now when I sit in the back corner on those hard plastic chairs I’m filled with anxieties and restlessness and I feel claustrophobic in your white-bricked walls. To pass the tedious hour I pull up your blinds and watch out your dirty windows as birds fly across the red-orange morning sky. I long to be those birds so free from you and everyone else and be able to fly away.
Everyday I look out your windows and watch new birds have new journeys as I soundlessly stay inside and when the white haired lady or the brown haired man in their navy blue suits walk by me they sigh and keep walking because I am not up to their standards. Their sighs collect inside of me like childhood collections of bugs in little glass jars, but like all childhood collections it will get to big and those sighs will over flow and trickle down my cheeks and leave puddles under my polished black shoes.