VERY WELL THEN, I’ll make up your room. Yours can be on the first floor. The house is never completely empty, but you’ll have your own entry way, your own door. I’ll give you your own key. The room will be fully furnished, in fact you’ll never suspect that it ever belonged to anyone else or was used for any other purpose. Your room will be as cozy and warm as cozywarm can be, there will be a soft, broken-in, long and lovely blue couch that you can fold out into a bed, and shelves lined with books from any writer who ever wormed their way into your heart: Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir, Anaïs Nin, Camus and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
There will be an old-fashioned floor lamp in the corner that you can turn on with the tug of a chain, and a pot of sweet peppermint, camomile, or fireweed tea that has been steeping for ages, and yet whenever you take a cup, it’s always at the right temperature and is never too weak nor too strong for your taste. This will be the little room I make up for you in my heart. From here, you can come, go, and inhabit me. You can put your black stockinged legs up and stretch out, set your tired hands behind your sleepy head, drowse and admire the wallpaper.
north! 