There is a girl sitting in the corner.
The room is wide and made of cold gray stone. It has a soaring ceiling and is lit only by the sun seeping in through the windows. The girl has rich, dark skin and thick hair. Her eyes are blue, and her simple clothes hang gently around her shoulders. Her voice has a gentle sing-song quality, yet it is low and smooth. Her soul is very old. She never speaks, but has so very much to say.
Little boys chase all the other girls around the stone room, throwing paper hearts at their feet. The girls yell and run away laughing, their patent leather shoes squeaking in their wake. When they think no one is looking, the ringleted girls carefully pick up each paper heart and marvel at the crinkled paper, then place it lovingly in their pink purses.
Adults bustle in and out of the room in their work clothes. They all have tall stacks of paper they are balancing, trying to maneuver around the rambunctious children. These adults in the stone room never pay much attention to the children. . . except for the blue-eyed girl. For some reason, the grown-ups always seem struck by the blue-eyed girl and gaze at her with curiosity. Without fail, they become distracted by the giant ticking clock on the wall. The adults are the only ones that pay attention to the clock.
College students come to the room to observe. They have philosophical discussions about the room--mulling over the ambiance of the lighting, the traffic patterns of the children and adults, the giant ticking clock, the smooth gray stone, the red paper hearts on the floor. They stay up late at night thinking about the room until finally, their weary eyes droop closed and they fall asleep at their laptops. The blue-eyed girl does not appear in their thesis papers.
World leaders speak about the room on TV, ignoring the subject of the girl, each trying to sound more educated than the next. These politicians all boast about their degrees, carrying around their paper certificates in giant picture frames hung around their necks. "Room Studies, PHD."
Musicians slave away, trying to capture the essence of the room on their violins and harps. They scribble out the notes on crumpled manuscript paper, frustrated with the results. Trying to incorporate the blue-eyed girl into their soundscapes always comes out sounding dissonant and complicated.
None of the stone-room-dwellers are aware of where all the paper comes from. The adults pick up their stacks of paper each morning, never thinking twice about its origin. The college students print out their regurgitated knowledge, never having to refill the paper cartridges. Nobody knows who handwrites all of the certificates on the elegant gold paper or draws the lines of the staves for the musicians.
The little girls do not realize the blue eyed girl sneaks away from the beloved room just to cut out extra little paper hearts in case one of them doesn't have enough to fill their purse. They do not know that she spends the nights soaking rich wood pulp in tubs and gently pressing it dry every morning. They do not know that she carefully picks out different fibers for each one of them, so that they are never disappointed.
The room-dwellers do not understand that they cannot look at this blue-eyed, silent beauty because they know deep down that they owe her the world. They do not understand that her labors connect them all forever.
They do not understand that she is love, in its simplest form. Humble, thoughtful, nonexclusive, relentless, and all encompassing. They do not realize that if they looked her in the eyes with reciprocating love, the stone walls would crumble.
