On being alone; The room where I used to live.

One room, the over seer of relationships that come and go, the love that flows and ebbs between them all.

The girl watches the artist paint. Paint on the walls, on the floor, mixed with the melted wax on her cushion covers. Her favourite room. Taken. His studio. Setting up for painting sessions. Door shut fast, heater on high. Dressing, stripping, corsets cinching her waist, ribbons around her neck, then, his fingers in her hair. Pressed back against the cold glass of the high reaching window as the winter night looks in. His hand, unwelcome yet delicious between her legs.The hands around her throat, the play acting, the sexual tension. The rape.

Silent tears on her unmoving face, body stiff with revulsion. When she leaves, the rhythmic slap of his leather belt arching over his shoulder to cut deep into his own back.

She brings a boy home. Lies entwined on mattresses upstairs, they listen to the artist storm around his studio. The sounds of anger. The rhythmic slap. The artist stands in the doorway to that room. Threatens the boy with violence if he stays. The artist marks his territory with his stance, his attitude. The room is his. In extension, the house is his. The boy is not welcome.

Months later, the artist is gone. Gone is the easel, the boxes of supplies, the leather belt. The paint remains on the wall. Furniture added, removed, rearranged.

A man sits with his back to tattered white curtains that sway in the early summer breeze through the open window. He plays the guitar softly, accepts her apologetic kiss as she looks out, down to where the boy approaches to say goodbye. A single wrapped flower to say what words can’t. She shies away from his attempt to engage her, to kiss her. To remind her of what is leaving. She indicates the window where soft music plays; he might be watching. The man doesn’t look up from his guitar. Only the room looks on, its high reaching window silently watching them.

Two years later, furniture added, removed, rearranged. The paint remains on the wall. A bed pushed up beneath it. Photos of the man pinned to the headboard.  Of the man, and her.

She has brought the boy home. Almost as if he’d never been away. They lie entwined on the bed, underneath the photos of the man. Underneath the paint left splattered on the wall. He promises her he will always kiss her like this. He will always touch her like this.  She welcomes his embraces greedily, selfishly. The embraces she turned down two years ago, on the other side of the high reaching window that now lets in the first light of dawn, the birdsong at the break of an early summer’s day.

Weeks later, she lies awake. Startled out of a dream by the light. A fat sleeping tabby lies stretched out beside her on the bed purring deeply. She lies awake. Alone, but for the cat.

She lies on the pillow that she fancies still carries the boy’s clean scent. She lies under the headboard where photos of the man remain. She lies on the bed pushed up to the wall where paint is still splattered. And the high reaching window is thrown open, letting in the sounds of a new day beginning, the traffic and the birds of a midsummer’s day.

A year later. Another room, another city. Another early summer's day outside a different high reaching window.

No artist, no boy, no man. No cat.

Just a girl.

In a room of one's own.

Waiting for the summer to begin.