OLDER
She wants kids.
And a career.
At the same time?
A wisp of fading brunette falls out of her carefully constructed updo.
And don’t forget about travelling.
Oh, the places she wishes to go. To see the crystal blue seas stretched to the end of the horizon to greet the paled blue and curls of white at the very edge of the world. To feel the velvet sands embrace her bare toes in a gentle warmth. To taste the salt infused air on the tip of her tongue.
An annoying itch embedded in her scalp drags the young woman out of her daydream. With the pen in her right hand still scratching into the paper, she slides her left hand into her hair and starts to scratch. And scratch. The sharp nail edges burrow into her head, stripping off bits of scalp and tissue. Finally the itch is soothed and she pulls away relieved, leaving behind leaking lines. Wet, brown clumps of matted hair tangle around her red stained fingertips. For a second, her hand stops writing. She stares at the hairs, at the greys mixed in with the browns.
There’s a sudden burst of obnoxious laughter so out of place in this quiet building that it startles her. Planning, she needs to keep planning. The sound seems to echo in her cavernous mind long after it has been hushed. With her mind again on seas and the future, she unintentionally brings the still dirtied index finger to her mouth. Her habit has long been ingrained within her and the teeth waste no time in beginning to gnaw at the sticky nail. It floods her mouth with a familiar bitterness, so much so that she doesn’t notice the sting when teeth meet flesh. It isn’t until something crunches that she pulls her hand away. The end of her finger is nothing more than a mangled stub. Shakily, she covers it with a piece of used paper, ignoring how sharply the red stands against her greying skin.
A car.
And a house.
She can picture it now, the perfect home the little girl she used to be would think about. A space that is truly her own. With the navy blue striped wall and a breakfast bar in the kitchen.
The pen brushes the wrinkles on her dry, cracked knuckles as it writes about the green wallpaper with lively daisies. Every line of ink invites a new wrinkle to carve its way into her skin, cutting deep lines of a life not yet lived. But still, the old lady writes.