they painted my room orange once, they wrote the wrong code down.
it was supposed to be red, red like the surge of positivity through your lumbars, red like it was to right something wrong.
i think it brought my clausnophobia back from my childhood.
everything in my room went bad very quickly. i can’t tell you how many half-drank milk boxes that was only opened in the morning and had to be thrown out before noon came. my mother, in her usual condescending tone, commented that it was the dampness. the ceiling wasn’t high enough to support air circulation and heat from the shower to recycle. the cold wind from the air-con always stayed near the floor, thus the middle part became a meeting ground of awkwardness and discomfort.
fifteen years i’ve lived here. fifteen years seven months to be exact. i moved in when i was nine. it was a school day. i arrived from school to the new house at three in the afternoon. my father was there, outside the house, beeking. my mother inside making sure everything was aligned. at seventeen, seven years ago, we renovated the house. i got to pick my own wall paint color. i picked red. it came out orange.
we are moving out in a week. for a while i’ve been thinking of how i was to cope with the loss of my room, a space i had grown so attached to, its walls became my second skin, the noisy air-con a second lung, the peeling paints a happy snowflake over my bed. all the flaws have become mine, just like all my mistakes were conceived here. there is a pang of sadness, a taste of longing at the back of my tongue, already longing for all my mistakes to come together and blanket themselves around me.
my room is now an empty space. every anonimity boxed. they are moving my bed. i am peeling off a poster of my childhood idol from the wall. a chip of paint sticks to the tape. i fold it. put it in my pocket.

(no, i haven’t moved out yet. we just bought the new house but it’s still very ugly so we’re going to spend a good amount of time and money to renovate it. meanwhile i will be in my room writing sappy goodbye notes. to my room. k.)