the things I have not done

There is a roll of wallpaper sitting on the floor of my living room. 

I’m not one hundred percent certain, but I think it might be the exact wallpaper that the room needs. 

I have pictures of it. Theyre online, on the wallpaper selling website. It looks nice. It has plants on it. 

In my head is how the room would look with the wallpaper applied. The room looks better. It looks wholesome. 

I’ve been meaning to put up the wallpaper for six months now. But its not up. It just sits there on the floor. All rolled up. Its probably a little uncomfortable by now. Like the genie in the bottle in the cave. I bet it would love to be unfurled. I bet it would feel really nice. 

The wallpaper is not alone. Next to it is a drying rack and the drying rack is broken.  

It’s been broken for the past three months and Ive been meaning to fix it. Somehow though, something always seems to come up. Every time I get my clothes out of the washing machine and set them up to dry, on that old broken rack, it collapses, and the clothes fall in a heap on the floor.

The problem is the hinges. On the hinges there used to be a little washer that would keep them from coming apart. Over time, the washers have gone away. Who is to say where they have gone? Maybe they went down the drain. Or under the sofa. Or out the window. I’m not sure. But theyre not here. And in their absence the drying rack can’t stand up straight. 

The wallpaper and the drying rack that is broken are not alone. Next to them is a pot of paint. The paint is white, and the pot is unopened. 

Ive been meaning to paint the kitchen. At the moment its an ugly colour. A lime green. But not the lime green of an actual lime, more the colour of a sick child. I want to paint over it with the white. But the can of paint remains stubbornly unopened. I should get to it. 

At the moment on the floor is a roll of wallpaper, a broken drying rack and a can of unopened paint. The room is unfinished, my clothes fall on the floor, and the kitchen is an ugly lime green colour. Days go past the window and I do things, but these things remain undone. But that’s ok. If they weren’t there, I don’t know what would be. 

So, for the time being:

These are the things I have not done.