Butterflies of the Ceramic Kind

The ceiling fan is on, spinning around, around, around. The noise is repetitive, cutting through the air and slicing through the thoughts I can barely string together. Womp, womp, womp, womp. It is cold and the fan is unnecessary. It’s strange. The noise would block out any chance of the warning of the doorknob, the creak of the old door. 1

Looking up, it looks like the ceramic butterflies hung on nails on the robin’s egg blue wall could fall at any second. They’re hanging next to a picture of an angel sitting on a stone bench at the end of a brick path in a flower garden. It was one of my grandma’s favorite paintings, the frame ornate and tarnished with age.2

Candles flicker even though the ceiling light is on, throwing dark shadows. Porcelain dolls stand on doily covered wooden shelves, dressed in old fashioned dresses, silk dresses, their glass eyes staring but not quite looking, their hair curly, shades of blonde, red, brown, black. 3

The fake wooden slats on three walls make everything seem smaller, more like a cardboard box, a prison. The claustrophobia is unbearable. As I lay here I can feel the stares of my grandparents, my mother, me, from the old photographs on the wall opposite. 4

Trinkets from here or there cover every possible surface not covered with dolls. They mean nothing, absolutely nothing, now that their owner is dead. If you ask me, they didn’t mean much when she was alive. I turn my head to the side and see a bowl on the nightstand, next to a book marked with a green ribbon. The water in the bowl moves slightly, tiny little waves moving the dead goldfish inside it.5

I feel the old velvet under my fingertips, the almost roughness of it as it’s scratched with my nails. The pillows are numerous and embroidered to match the bedspread with sad little attempts at flowers and leaves. I feel like a few of them are imprinted on my cheek.6

I smell soap and Listerine. I smell dust in the blankets, on the glass pieces of trash on the numerous tables scattered around the room, on the dolls. I smell sweat. (Disappointment, fear, disgust, tears, they were strangely all missing. Then, anyway.)7

A spider crawls across the ceiling. It was in the corner before, looking at me, too. Staring. I study the stucco so hard shapes pop out at me as I lay here, alone now. I see a flower, a face, me. 8

I wonder who I would have been.