what desperation felt like...

she kept clacking her ring against the side of the plastic chair. she was a devotee of all things that tapped at the side of her temples. the ever-present tap, tap, tap echoing off the sides of brass door handles and linoleum floors. Sara was a pursuant of it all. she sought sanity when she felt unhinged, and a biting wound when life tasted all thoroughly, numbingly saccharine. she sat in the check in wondering if the ceiling fan tottering over her head would come unhinged on its next revolution.

one.

four.

seven...

nope.

this is what it felt like. what desperation felt like. watching ceiling fans and counting all of a life’s transgressions from one moment to the next as it rotated in its socket. she envisaged what had brought her here. to this moment sitting politely in a doctor’s office the right hand decorously placed on a knee and the left… the left hand with the incessant clacking.

Sara, Sara Elizabeth…?

her eyes panned left then right waiting for someone else to claim namesake, but no such luck. this was her generic moniker, two first names. who has a first name for a last name? it only lead to confusion and derision. she followed the white tuft down a dimly lit hallway illuminated only by lifesaver primary colored doors. the orange room.

Sara hated orange.

she remembered how her father used to roll his own cigarettes. she would watch the orange tip, the burning embers as he inhaled deeply between those self-incriminating mumbles… she wondered what he said out there. through the translucent window to that man's world on a december winter’s night all Sara heard were paper towels rubbing on a clean glass pane.