t’s like walking into a time capsule, years of memories compressed into what appears to be only a simple bedroom. The fatigued wooden floorboards tremble underfoot as I walk into the room. Its rectangular shape contained only a dresser, a cupboard a bed and a window.

In front lies the half open window and a soft breeze sends the dust waltzing around the room, his only connection to the outside world. Above the over varnished wooden beams is a wind chime, a rather odd looking one, after all it was his adored mobile, that he so excitedly tugged on in his crib everyday as an infant. Miniscule wooden animals dangle from the crown and dance elegantly in ballet of the winds. 

To the left of the room on a grand oak dresser sits only a simple wrist watch. Meek in appearance yet the bravest in the room. In the vast silence you hear the faint sound of his watch tick. The frayed leather tires every day. The silver plated dial glints effortlessly in the nascent rays of the morning light, like it did every morning when it rode this man’s blood soaked hands through gruesome war, scarlet memories that plague his mind even today. You see the watch was a gift from his friend who dint survive the wrath of the war and so the man never will wear it.

I move forward and open the cupboard, where under a heap of bleached shirts hiding in a translucent glass box, a ring. A ring that once laced the finger of his dear wife. The diamond has started to rust and lies there forgotten waiting again to see the light of day.

My eye is caught now by the iridescent burgundy pills that lay unevenly splattered across a stark white paper covered in doctor’s scribbles and a half empty glass of water coated in dust on a timber side table next to the bed. Vulnerable and lonely they are unacknowledged.