The hum of the florescent light above buzzed dolefully in her ear. The flicker of light interrupted her thoughts with each painful sputter as she sat quietly, eyes scanning the sallow wall in front of her. Not quite white, not quite yellow. The spackle pitted and chipped, the gritty mortar frozen, crying permanent, solid tears, weeping from layers between the concrete blocks, stacked like a layered cake with icing twelve days old – hard and dry.

Her shifting eyes caught every crack, burning them into her mind as she traced their contours repeatedly, reading them like stories. Oh, the dizzying tales this room could tell if only walls could talk. She stared at the fractures as though spotting them would stop them in their tracks like a deer stops in the beam of a headlight. But she knew it was a fruitless standoff. In another three months, the small splits (especially the one in the ceiling) would soon become hearty rips that would gape in awe… something else to annoy and distract her when the time came.

The room was stale, reminiscent of an airport, a place that sees hundreds of people come and go and none all too clean; a place accepting of all a weary traveler who comes to make use of it. The mattress sagged as though it had supported a great weight for a disheartening number of nights, steadily wilting as Atlas, fading beneath the burden of his load. But it was a new mattress… or so they claimed.

The corroded plate covering the air conditioner vent rattled under the strain of its rusted bolts. Tightened too harshly, about ready to break and throw themselves across this little room. The warped frame popped in time with the flickering of the light, making a wretched harmony that plagued the ears and prodded the serenity of her mind. The air blew warm and muggy from the vent, smothering everything in the room as it rested after falling from the barred mouth cut in the wall. Contrary to what the dial read, the air blew… mockingly. Never cold, always just… air… like breath on the back of your neck. The dial on the switch plate currently read “OFF,” and yet the air continued to spew from the slits in the grate, lying heavily upon her and the contents of the room like a hand pressing down with gentle pressure.

The blinds hung raggedly from the window as one would imagine clothing hanging from a beggar. They swung gently, back and forth, as the wind crept in through the perforated seal between the glass and the concrete wall, and occasionally tapped the clouded panes. Just another noise to add to the orchestra.

It’s a wonder I’m not wearing a straight jacket… as each fixture chimed in with the buzzing light. After all, the room in which she carried out her daily routine was more like a cell than a room. It was a cramped space with a main, overhead light (that could drive an epileptic to fits) and a small bubble light over the sink that glowed pale yellow… like a flashlight threatening death as its batteries expel their fading charges. A sink, yellowed with age and use, offered the same tepid water from both “COLD” and “HOT.” A chipped mirror was fastened haphazardly to the wall behind the sink, its screw supports covered in paint. One of those jobs where, “another coat should do it,” was surely a motto. A sloppy and careless job well done, fellas. A rusted medicine cabinet hung crookedly on the adjacent wall. Its door, with a clouded mirror affixed to the front, cried mercilessly when opened. The cabinet’s single, frosted glass shelf, hung in place. Surely plotting to spill its contents into the floor if manhandled too roughly.

To the left of the medicine cabinet’s wall loomed a closet with no door, choking on a large ration of clothing hanging from a rickety rod. “Walk-in closets!” is what the brochure had claimed. The absence of a door does not constitute “walk-in.”

Piles of books, some for leisure, others for studies, cluttered the tiny corners of the room, and broke the uniformity of the drab walls, their spines calling to all in tantalizing gold script, each boasting intriguing titles and promising adventures beneath their covers. Their summaries enticed the imagination and wooed the mind with tales of ghosts, murderers and the stars and each offered a temporary escape from the dull room.

Paint covered every fixture, and although dried, the acrylic fingers reaching down the faces of each canvas gave the permanent illusion that a drop was just about to make its journey to the floor.

Nails jutted from the two walls boarded with varying widths of wood planks. An acupuncture session gone awry but a handy place to hang a ball cap.

To the common visitor, this was a hole in the wall.

The only things saving the room, devoid of personality, from becoming a prisoner’s cell, were the posters and cards scattered amongst her few belongings, breaking up the rigidity of the room. The posters drew eyes away from the titles stacked in the corners and offered a splash of color in her monochromatic box. A handful of cards sent wishes for well being and were postmarked with addresses of places she longed to be. Aside from those things, a bamboo stalk, the heartiest shade of green, stood waving in the constant breeze of the A/C unit, planted securely in the hands of a diligent, ceramic frog.

But whatever it lacked in looks, the room made up for in comfort. Although cramped, it was home. Not quite paradise… ok, there’s nothing heavenly about this place, but it was her own little corner of the world in which she could retreat at any hour without worrying about intruding on someone (and without someone intruding on her). She could do as she pleased, come and go as she wished, and could withdraw into the depths of her mind without any disturbances (aside from the symphony of pops and whines generated by the air conditioner that refused to cease blowing, and the light above that threatened, on a daily basis, to blow out). And that feeling helped to overshadow the little box’s bleakness.

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She imagined it was possible to live here partly, because her heart wasn’t… living here that is. Yes, the muscle beat within her chest, but her heart of hearts was three hundred miles away in the hands of a man who knowingly possessed and caressed it. Had her heart still been her possession, she imagined it to be a near impossible task to overlook her shady living conditions. The more she thought about it, the more her room seemed like those run down motel rooms they show in murder mystery shows – the kind of room Jane Does die in after getting mixed up with the wrong crowd of people; the kind of rooms you always imagine having outdated, brown, shag carpet and peeling wallpaper. Furnished “dungeons” (because of its drabness and air of despair) with door keys and cocaine dust most certainly hiding in the crevices of shady drawer corners, left by those equally shady residents before. You know, those ones with one lamp that lightens only the desk on which it stands… or the rooms with three hundred tenants… only one of them noted in the Guest Book (or actually human for that matter). But since her mind wandered with her heart, and since her heart wasn’t with her, she instead saw (and felt) the comfort of someone else’s arms – the arms of the man who held her within his powerful hands. She, in her mind, was with her love… and he didn’t live in a shady motel dorm room.

She knew her feeling of a shabby hideaway was not unjustified. The building had been a motel at one point, ages ago. But it didn’t matter. It was a temporary situation that would expire in another year and a half, at which time she would have her degree in hand and there would be no looking back. All of this… would just be a memory. Thank God.

This small Texas town was one she was ready to put behind her. But without it, there was no going home, and she knew that. She had to accomplish things first. Then, and only then, could she reward herself with her deepest desires and go home to fulfill her idea of the American Dream.