“We live in a world occupied by dead living things,” She says.
“The wood on the stairs is solid oak and streaked with a fresh coat of sealant and a stain to keep it ‘natural’ looking. It’s a strange thing. The manmade stairs, stain, and sealant all designed to look as reminiscent of the purest nature-made material as possible. It’s still dead though. It was once a living tree, roots firmly dug into soil, steadfast, strong, and solid. Now it no longer grows, just sits stagnant in a living space filled with fake fauna and flower-patterned fabrics.
“We bring the outside indoors and let it die for decoration. Perhaps we do the same for people. We keep ourselves indoors, we cultivate and grow into plush carpeting and cool-tone walls. This room is one of those rooms. I have rooted deep into this creaky mattress. I am comfortable in this room—the room carefully designed to express the me I have built. She is as meticulously constructed as those wooden stairs, painted and sealed to look natural. She’s steadfast, strong, and solid.
“I am one of them, aren’t I? She is a living dead thing. Quarantine has proven that she must be maintained with the same tools which preserve the stairs. She must be polished, reinforced, cleaned in order to do her job without a blemish. One cannot do her work with feeling. She cannot survive if she is alive.
“But those tools have disappeared here in isolation without the appraising looks others. She has been chipped at, flaked away like the old paint on the baseboards by the stairs. Who will she be when isolation is over?
“Who will I be if living dead cannot be maintained?”
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