March 17, 2015

upstairs, where the trouble is

A faucet's slow, leaking torture. The hiss and hiccup of decaying radiators.
A shower stall poorly set and the wall around it pockmarked with eroding tiles.
I turn and head upstairs to the room reserved for the occasional guest—
the soft, undisturbed bed, a sparsely filled closet, a single window opening
to sky. If I wanted to disappear, I would move here, this quiet asylum nested
away from each taunting disrepair. Months could go by and there I'd be,
propped up on overlarge pillows, thumbing through adjectives, building exquisite piles
of paragraphs while the faucet still dripped and the radiators still flickered and the walls
kept crumbling. I wonder how long I'd last on this cottony island, how many pages I'd fill
before I needed some trouble to save me.