She opens her eyes. She must have been crying in her sleep; her eyelids are heavy and swollen. She doesn’t move off the bed, staying there perfectly still, looking at her night table with all the unread books, her desk with the stacks of papers, and the floor, which should be flooded by sunlight from her bedroom window, but is covered with shadows instead. Tiny drops of sunlight fall on the broken down wooden floor, escaping the intricate pattern of her curtain, but even those aren’t as bright as the sun outside. Drops of faded light are all they are.
She doesn’t want to go back to sleep. She doesn’t even want to close her eyes, but she isn’t getting up. Life has become such a chore, so similar to the broken down wooden floor, ruined from all her restless dragging of furniture around her room; her desperate attempts to make a change, an effort not even worthy of being a statement of anything. In a few minutes, she will start her day among the shadows, pretending that they don’t annoy her, pretending she is fine; a word she has grown to hate over time. She will say hello to people and smile, she will make jokes, she will eat when she’s hungry and drink when she’s thirsty, and indeed, she will be fine on every possible front. Between the smiles and the jokes and the food, and all the endless chores that add up to life, she will hope she runs into a drop of sunlight, not as bright as the sun outside, but brighter than the shadows, and she will hope it will last for more than just a passing moment. Maybe the drop of sunlight will be warm enough to melt some of the icy sorrow she keeps buried deep inside her heart, or bright enough to scare away her worries, her guilt, her disappointments, even if it only lasts long enough to give her a moment’s peace. Maybe she should even venture to hope that she would run into more than one drop of sunlight on this day.
She gets up, sitting at the edge of the bed, still staring at the drops of sunlight. She has nothing to look forward to, but there will always be a maybe. That will have to do for now.
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