Your End is the Road

"Your end is the road."

"The road to what?" I ask, holding up the end of a brown cotton sheet.

Layla's sigh floated down from the ladder she was perched on. She tucked her paintbrush behind her multiple-hooped ear. "I thought we went over this already. The road doesn't lead to anywhere; it just travels to the horizon. It's symbolic."

She enunciated the last word the way people do when they try to speak to foreigners. Because everyone will understand English if you speak it twice as slow and three times as loud.

"Yeah, yeah," I said with a roll of my eyes. "The desert's supposed to symbolize the journey of life through rough times and harsh conditions, so shouldn't you give the viewers some kind of hope? You know, give them something that will promise better times or whatever. Like a big green oasis at the end."

Layla only laughed. "Do I look like God?" Only if God had long black hair with blue streaks, a tattoo of Elmo on his wrist, and a very imaginative taste in clothing.

"Adding a promise of the future in my painting would imply that I'm psychic or all-knowing. I don't know squat about how the economy works. All I know is that prices are going up, up, up; and my chances for buying a new flat are going down, down, down. That's what I want to portray here, our current situation."

She turned and flashed me her beautiful smile. "I am optimistic though, so I will be adding a patchwork flower further down the 'road'." She made the little quotation marks with her fingers. She knows I hate when she does that.

I have to admit. Layla is right. Who knows whats gonna happen in two years, two months, or even two days? The only thing that we know about the end is, well, nothing. The end is the road, and its always right beyond the horizon.

Bethany Bachman writes in Philadelphia and, just like all her sisters, loves the name Layla. Hmm, who will get to use it first?

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