Sunset Room

    Quiet and restful. It has the feeling of the end of the day. The colors of this room match this feeling, the sun coming through the reddish brown curtains like a sunset no matter the time of day. These curtains are rarely opened, when light floods this room it is an invader, unwelcome and alien. Only the sunset is welcome here. The end of the day has always been my favorite time, an end to the noise and confusion. Swirling voices, braying laughter, half heard conversations pressing in on my ears. People pass without even seeing me, why won't they look at me? Where are they going? Nowhere, just like me. By the end of the day I must retreat, my ears ringing, my emotions flattened and is that fear? The stillness of this room folds me in a quiet blanket. Chaos shifting back to order like a slow wave.
    The bright green plant grabs the small amount of light coming in through the window and it sparkles there, a hint of the world outside, a feeling of hope. The air is warm but just a little stifling, this warmness is comforting and makes me think of sleep and in sleep lies safety, it closes around me like an embrace.
    A constant hum fills my ears, once gotten used to is heard no more. Unless I stop it, then the silence is startling and almost scary. Like coming out of a trance to wonder how you got to where you find yourself to be. There is also a sense of foreboding here. I could lose myself and although it seems as though time stops in this room I know it does not. I push that thought away. What could that mean for me, to spend so much time in a room of constant sunset, my only hint of the world outside the green leaves of a houseplant sparkling fitfully in ever dying light.
    Smoke swirling and twisting making a ghostly wall in front of my eyes, changing shape with every exhale, movement or stir of the air. It mesmerizes this wall does. Twisting and bending. I can see strange shapes, shapes I can't quite make out. Their meaning eludes me and I am lost in thought.
    The light fades from orange, to purple, to black. With a flip of a switch, false light, it has been dark for sometime I realize. What time is it? I don't really want to know. I am afraid to look.
    Some of my greatest joys are in this room, or are they really obsessions? My other lives are here and they are more real to me than is my god given one at times. Books and games where I have become so many others in my minds eye. Heroes, villans, things I could never be elsewhere. I am loath to leave them but all the while feeling the sands of time slipping. The light fading to black. I loath to leave but when I can or do, when life pulls me away, there is also a sense of relief, like I have escaped some kind of clever trap built just for me. It calls me back always.
    What else is there? Too afraid to throw the curtains wide, cast off the sunset. I wish I could and I don't wish. My duality struggles within me. This room has a duality of its own depending on the light.
    How many lives have I lived in this room, I can remember them all. They each grow boring and can be replaced with another and another and another. If only I could reinvent myself so easy.  Am I missing something? I shiver to think that I might be but have never found any proof that I am. I am content here. I can hear noise from other rooms, TV's blaring, laughter, barking, running feet, water running, toilet flushing. All so distant, far away or am I far away? I hope so, I hope not.
    This is my sanctuary and my prison. It gives me what I can't seem to find outside this room. Let the world go on without me, my window to the world lies before my eyes.