Rooms
Ocher and quince wads
pack gaps in particleboard walls.
Yellow newspapers underlay linoleum.
The apartment is smeared by nicotine
When it rains, a paper-Mache atlas of a blotched sky
can be read on the ceiling.
The window-sill slants, he dares not lean out.
He listens to street fights; imagines gore
seeping into inky basement wells.
Saturday nights bleed into Sunday. Sometime
amid the gray hours he decides to leave,
to wander vomit blitzed alleys
to search a doorstep and steal a Sunday paper,
then he returns to the grimy room
to read of better places
where better crimes get clean away.
He has a girlfriend, one he sees only once a week,
they sit on the narrow bed reading the news.
She tells him that her apartment has thin walls,
that at night strangers scratch upon them
as if writing to her.
Finally He lands a job in a hotel as a night porter.
His allotted room is pure white and sterile,
more a cell than a living space.
If he puts the light on, all that white hurts his eyes,
in time he gets used to it. His mind slowly
sheds layers of brick-dust and smudged print.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2022
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