In Hundreds of Shades

Eraser crumbs and faded pencil lines leave scars deep in the art. Painted over with bold bright strokes can't hide where they are or what she has changed.
Arm and mind tired of scrubbing the blunders from the paper. Crumpled towels stained with ink and paint and frustration where she tried to dab away the missed strokes and ugly lines. Eye sometimes deceived when she tried to envision art and write that vision onto a page. The colors didn't always mix well together and some of her lines were anything but straight. Brush stroke bleeds into pencil lines and make the picture murky, nothing like the masterpiece she began.
Nothing like she hoped it would be.
And in wiping redemption from the paper, she signed ruin on the art.
Dozens of answers to questions what should she do with it, all splattered onto page like a shattered color wheel slipped past its confines.
Wipes a bead of water from her face, smearing red in a bristled wound, hands dyed with the colors of her mistakes, scattered in brushes and tubes and pencils and charcoal on the floor. Some places worn so thin, a slight shift and they will tear the whole piece apart. Sigh escapes lips and fist closes over throat, eyes dart over the artwork in front of her, into which she has poured her whole life, painting hopes and fears and risks and dreams in hundreds of shades.
Pouring red in her anger on the canvas, weeping blue in her pain, dancing pinks and golds and greens in her joy and happiness, wisping white in her uncertainty and innocence, driving black in her darkness and depth.
Black and white fade to gray over time and sharp lines become blurred.
Now it is chaos.
Messy, imperfect, evolving.
Like her life.
All of it poured out onto a canvas, unfinished.
Takes step back, wipes hands on rag, skin freckled with colors sprung from her tools.
Standing back she sees it more clearly now.
Colors mixed all together make something whole and unique and different and beautiful. Scarred lines and erasers etch depth in the art and her heart. A liquid mosaic. Something chaotic, imperfect, evolving.
Something beautiful.
Like her life.

The Waiting Room: Part V

Heartbeat nearly rips hers right out of her chest and she begins to tremble. “Now?” she all but whispers, voice dissolving into her shock and fear that this cannot be real.

He raises a scarred hand and gently takes her face in it.  His eyes are sad and soft and hopeful. “Soon.”

Gaze follows gaze as door to the room opens slowly and press of noise from the waiting room snakes in, curling familiar coils around her wild heart. He holds her gaze and says firmly, “Very soon.”

The shuffling of papers and the calling of names. Fingers clench around token, cool weight assuring her it will not dissolve in her hands like all the others. The door is closed behind her, shutting out the half of her heart and the blood-bought life she leaves there with him. Because he promises he will take care of it. He promises her all the things she asked for. Yes, she will wait, but this token, her chance not gambled but hard-earned, is hers. Always hers.

Now she is in the line, shuffling along with the others, tokens, passes, and stamps all held close. All clinging to promises. The one a little ahead of her catches her eye and smiles. He has been waiting a long time too, she recognizes him from the waiting room, the room they will soon be leaving. No white fences, no letters in two languages to send home. Just flights of adventure. Maybe she will find in him a fellow seeker, lusting for adventure more than proof of existence.

Line moves towards the exit slowly, hands stamped and leave granted. Pats on the back and good luck wishes from the ones at the door send off the leavers. Her heart is racing as she draws closer. This is not her adventure, the sum of all her tears, but she is moving. She is getting there. She is strong. She is ready.

The one ahead of her clenches his pass, not a golden ticket but a stopover on the way to the adventure, and shakes their hands. It, like this waiting room, is part of the trip. Her next stop, too. One glance back, a nod and smile in her direction, and he disappears through the doorway.

Then it is her turn.

Hesitant, trembling fingers almost don’t let go. Then the token falls into outstretched hands and a ticket is hers. The murmur of the waiting room behind her presses against her heart and she looks back. Eager, expectant, and dejected faces all catch her gaze. Waiting, watching her go. Hopeful.

The smallest of smiles tips her lips. A reassurance because she, too, has sat in those hard plastic seats and swallowed disappointment as others left not an hour ago. They must be strong enough to trust the wait. Just as she is.

Heart racing and mind reeling, she steps out the door into the pouring rain.

The Waiting Room: Part IV

For what seems like too long a moment considering how serious this moment is to her, he does not answer her. A wild moment has her thinking he has left her here, a perfect mess in this hateful room. But then he sits, wrapping a strong, comforting arm around her shoulders, shaking in her anger and despair. He does not move when she tries to shrug him off and recoils into herself, wrapping tear-splashed arms around herself like a cocoon and putting on her stone face. Again.

And then he sighs.

Not a frustrated sigh or a sigh of irritation. But a sigh like one who is sad to see his loved one upset for so long. “Let me tell you something,” he says in a voice like a storyteller about to lay out the map for a story so wild and full of unexpected adventures. She does not bring her face, hidden behind her self-built wall, up to meet his but everything within her is tingling with expectation. Whispers tell her not to believe it, she has been let down before, but the hope swelling in her drowns the small voices and she leans forward, coiled like a spring about to be loosed, waiting.

“You think that I have made you wait because you are not good enough. Or that you are not ready or as deserving of all these things that you want, don’t you?” He points to the bold-lettered file, full of her myriad collection of herself, her life in all its pieces. All the things she thinks are not enough.

She nods, bringing wide eyes to meet his, the sheen of angry outpoured emotions trace lacy trails across her face like bittersweet caresses.

He shakes his head and smiles. Then he picks up her file and opens it again for her to see, thumbing through each page tenderly. “Look at what you have done, look at the things you have filled these pages with. All these little things have built you, are still building you, into something, something wild and beautiful. Something that is worthy of the things that you desire.”

She stares at the pages, those wretched pages, and then looks back at him. “Then why won’t you let me go? Why are you still making me wait?” she demanded, pitch rising with her frustration.

Wisp of paper and the file closes and is set it out of sight, fingers creating a steeple over which he looks at her with that maddening patience. His eyes spark and she wonders what he could be thinking of her, a broken, angry, crying mess. One he called beautiful.

“Let me tell you something,” he says again, “I know you think I have been making you wait because of all the things you do not deserve and are not worthy of. I know you have worked hard to prepare yourself to go and still are. So know this, my wanderer,” he looks at her carefully and she sits up straight, breath clogged in throat, as he says, “I am not making you wait because you are not ready to go or not deserving to go. You are. I’ve been making you wait because I know you are strong enough.”

She almost starts to weep again with the unfairness of the statement but he holds his hands up gently to stop her and says, “You are strong enough to wait for the things I have been preparing for you, the places I will send you. And, oh, they are such places…”

Images dance in her head, images of fire and dancing and danger and adventure. Her heart kicks up a beat or two and she tries not to get dizzingly lost in them. She is, after all, still here in this cold stark room, pouring out tears and craziness and hope in rapid succession. “When will I get to go?” she asks breathlessly. Daring herself that it might be true. It might be.

He smiles, that same patient, knowing smile that has been driving her and driving her crazy for so long. “You have already begun,” he gestures towards the door, “in there.”

The press of voices, the murmur of latent activity, the oppressive patience swell through the door and seep into this small room…

“The waiting room?”   

How she should have known that she would never be free of it. Waiting, she is always waiting. Her hopes wrap a tight fist around her throat and she is overcome. “In there is my journey?”

“It is the beginning. I know it doesn’t seem like much but it is important, just as important. And the longer you are there, the stronger you are, the more prepared you are for the great things I am giving to you.” He reproduces her file and opens it again. He draws a blood-red pen and signs the pages, her life and her redemption written out on them, in red, every single one.

Tears blur the images, soften their edges, as he slips her life out of sight again, payment for the things she gambled with all those hard-spent chances. All the ones she missed.

Warm fingers gently slip into hers and drop a cool, heavy round object into her palm. She stares. “What is it?”

“Your token.”

The Waiting Room: Part III

The weight of her world, heavy with desperate hopes and desires to prove to herself what she is capable of, packed into that one, simple, two-letter word. In one utterance, it has become a foul, four-letter word that violates everything within her. Her axis has shifted and she sits on the chair in this little room. It is, if possible, more uncomfortable than the ones outside. Probably ones who come in here don’t stay long enough to notice. But she does, oh how she does.

Her pocket jangles with the last few pennies she has and she thinks about all the foolishly wasted ones she threw into this chance, tumbling on the wisp of a promise, as empty as her heart which, moments ago, had been brimming with wonderful, frightening possibilities. The echoes and rattles in it now seemed to find all the corners of this little room and reverberate back to her, head hung in hands, eyes stinging with hot tears she tries to hold back.

A wisp of cloth and a gentle presence, one she longs for but edges away from as he sits and she silently weeps her dreams into her trembling hands. He lets her cry for a while and she is surprised, expecting him to usher her out to make room for the next one, the one who will take chances she is again denied, who must surely be better equipped and smarter than she.

“Why are you so sad?” he softly probes at last and she thinks what an utterly foolish question he asks. He of anyone must know how long she has been waiting. Sometimes, she can remember nothing else.

“Don’t you already know?” she can’t help but snap, the tears tracing hot, glistening paths down her cheeks.

“Tell me,” he said, his patience more maddening than his denial. Who would play odds on this ever? She bemoans her fate silently but obliges, “I put everything into this, on this chance, onto you. They said you could send me, give me the things and the opportunities to go places.” She draws a shaky voice, scraped over the shreds of her last hopes, “I’m so tired of waiting. It’s all I’ve ever done. Sat out there in that damn room, waiting. Watching everyone else come here and then leave. I waved more people off who get to go where I want to and don’t. I don’t understand.” She thought about them, smiling as they left, asking her questions and making promises knowing she would never go with them. “Why can’t I go?” she demands, her voice breaking into as many pieces as her heart had minutes before, “Why do you always make me wait?”

The Waiting Room: Part II

The door creaks open, a flood of stark, painful light. A voice beckons her inside. Heart pounding, palms sweating, she arises and steps into the room. The door closes abruptly behind her and she wrestles her fearful heart into submission, awaiting her verdict.

“So, you want to go, you say?” he asks, his voice understanding.

“More than anything,” she confirms.

He lifts a file with her name stamped across, bright bold letters she cannot miss. He says nothing as he sifts through and she waits, knees trembling. The press of voices outside is gone but the ones in her head she cannot shake, whispering doubts and reminders of lost chances before. No reason to believe that anything has changed. A little time wasted dabbling in random crafts, biding time for this moment, won’t count for much, she thinks.

He hands her the file and says softly, “You are a seeker, aren’t you?”

She takes the file with shaking hands. “Am I going to go?” she whispers, throat papered with the culmination of a thousand sleepless nights.

He smiles at her, an ever-patient smile and then says the word for which she was been waiting for what seems like endless time, the word that her heart cannot bear to hear: “No.”

The Waiting Room: Part I

The press of voices around her and the quiet pulse of latent activity delve into her head and withdraw every violent, longing, envious thought within her. The shuffling of papers and the calling of names, everyone but hers, create a soundtrack for a song she thinks she might hate. A glance at her watch seems to have strung out the time, and yet she has been her she thinks all her life. She traded all her hard-won tokens for a chance to be here, a vain but hopelessly hopeful promise that she might win. They promised her that he would know where to put her, give her a chance at the life she’s dreamed she would have since she was a youthful warrior playing the part. Gambling isn’t her game and she has played her odds to no end yet, wasting tokens, time, and ten thousand little chances calling shots she could not see. Her aim is off yet again and this hard plastic seat has officially become the most uncomfortable chair she has ever sat upon.

The one ahead of her in line—or maybe he was behind her and played his hand more masterfully than she—has taken off, leaving the seat next to her unoccupied for now. Soon enough the next bidder will take it up and surpass her, just like all the others. The one who just left waved as he past, clutching his golden ticket to the same places she wants to go. He promises to write in two languages but she knows he will forget because that’s what always happens. Success for those lucky winners means that ones like her are forgotten, the luckless players who pinch their pennies only to toss them into a bottomless wishing well at the end of the day. And the one before him dreamed of a home, of all the pretty white fences he would build and asked her to go with him. She thought about it for moment but then grew afraid, moved her seat to another line only to look back and see him take off, waving goodbye as he found his flight, his fight. Her heart aches watching him, sometimes she thinks, one of her ten thousand chances.

She shuffles through the stacks of books and papers on each table at the end. Maybe if she makes herself smarter, she will advance her place in line. Maybe if she gets her hand stamped just right, she will be cleared to leave. The chances are out there, they told her at the front desk, you just have to know where to look. She apparently threw away all her best chances, didn’t pay close enough attention to the odds and the statistics when she signed up for this. Futile dreams drift away as desperate fears creep in. She’s been here for so long, maybe they’ve forgotten about her. Maybe they forgot to tell him she is here, waiting, wanting, hoping.