The Room

She put her hair up in a ponytail. It was cleaning day and she was ready. The broom, the mop, the bucket, the cloth, the all-purpose cleaner, the wood cleaner, the bathroom cleaner, the bleach, the vacuum cleaner, the garbage can… the gloves were on! She liked the idea of putting in place all the little things for daily life to come and mess up with them again. She swept in the kitchen, mopped in the living room, scrubbed in the bathrooms, vacuumed in the bedrooms, and dusted all windows, tables, desks, and drawers. All this to the festive rhythm of the music specially chosen for such chores. It was almost done but there was the room with the closed door. As she had done other times, she slightly opened the door, just a bit, and a deep smell like sadness and anger came out from it. She couldn’t see well inside because it was very dark, but she could see some shadows moving around and she could hear their voices. She couldn’t recognize the words but she understood the tone, the confusion, the grief. She knows that room is not hers to clean. She knew so from the first moment. She closed the door carefully, cleaned the outside of it with the cloth hoping she was not making it worse, and went away a little bit sad thinking, what’s going to happen when he finally decides to clean that room?