Wallpaper Remains
A fresh start, that’s what she wanted. She left her youth behind during the war and moved into this apartment. Her new beginning started here. It was too cold inside, even with the heater on, but she was grateful and brave. She slowly renovated her new space, her new life. Peeling and scraping off layers of old wallpaper was a cathartic process for her, but it left the walls beneath pitted and scarred from her attempts to remove every last shred of paper. The wounded surfaces resembled the road that connects to the border of her town, a repetitious Highway of Death . It was everywhere. She wasn’t prepared to patch and seal the walls to perfect smoothness, so she used white paint to cover and purify the dents instead, whitewashing the apartment’s past. After a few years, she moved on, but her sad eyes remained. The wallpaper followed her wherever she went; it left its mark. She grew tired after every misunderstanding, disappointment, and retelling of herself. Life had been unkind to he