“Paint Over the Bad”

Prompt: 10 minutes, “Paint over the bad”

Paint Over the Bad

Paint over the bad. Just cover it up. The splotchy places where the perfect is marred. It’s been there for years, adding new streaks every year, nicked places where careless suitcases scraped the walls of the hall near the disappearing stairway of the attic. The attic, full of old who-knows-what, waiting for God-knows-what. Yep, just keep the door closed, keep painting over the bad, and let the next generation deal with it. To do otherwise seems so monumental. Makes me weary, really, to think of all the energy it would take to sort through all the collected stuff, to clean up the bad. So much easier to paint right over it, never acknowledging a problem. Hide behind the southern bullshit smile where we pretend everything is “just dandy,” when we know it’s not. We know it’s not. We feel it in the core of our being, the gut, but we just reach for the antacids, the fruit-flavored Tums, a paintbrush with fresh white paint, slap it on the walls while we jam to music, drowning out the pain, activity keeping us from having to feel. But is this always so bad? “To everything there is a season.” It may just be time to paint.