On The Move
The thing about living alone is that it isn’t. You’re not.
You dance, but you want to draw the curtains first. You shuffle, but it’s with a lightness. Sure, there’s nobody waiting for the bathroom or bothered by your dishes. But there’s the clicking claws of the Australian shepherd upstairs (want. one.), the lilt of the Dubliner landlady’s evening phone calls. Some rooms you avoid because of the dimness. You’re accumulating lamps at a disturbing rate. You never used to hit your car’s panic button except now, now that you are returning, late, past the neighbors’ bedtime: a flurry of whispered curses. The hallway seems long when it’s just you to walk it. Cold stone. But then conversations carry in both directions, under doors and through the cracks of ceilings. You get to know voices. You are alone, but no, you are not. You never are. Breakfast at the round kitchen table on a rainy Monday morning with just the pipe’s rushing water for company is just what you need. Coming home melancholic to dust-filled dingy corners and a mountain of unsorted clothes is maybe not. There is a room you are filling with books and stringed instruments. The only aesthetic you currently strive for is “lived in.” For the first time, you want to display photographs of the people you love.
And the thing is, you are living with yourself. Yourself is such an asshole. It is gonna be really tough living with her. You hate her most of the time.
You’re gonna have to stop doing that, I guess.
You dance, but you want to draw the curtains first. You shuffle, but it’s with a lightness. Sure, there’s nobody waiting for the bathroom or bothered by your dishes. But there’s the clicking claws of the Australian shepherd upstairs (want. one.), the lilt of the Dubliner landlady’s evening phone calls. Some rooms you avoid because of the dimness. You’re accumulating lamps at a disturbing rate. You never used to hit your car’s panic button except now, now that you are returning, late, past the neighbors’ bedtime: a flurry of whispered curses. The hallway seems long when it’s just you to walk it. Cold stone. But then conversations carry in both directions, under doors and through the cracks of ceilings. You get to know voices. You are alone, but no, you are not. You never are. Breakfast at the round kitchen table on a rainy Monday morning with just the pipe’s rushing water for company is just what you need. Coming home melancholic to dust-filled dingy corners and a mountain of unsorted clothes is maybe not. There is a room you are filling with books and stringed instruments. The only aesthetic you currently strive for is “lived in.” For the first time, you want to display photographs of the people you love.
And the thing is, you are living with yourself. Yourself is such an asshole. It is gonna be really tough living with her. You hate her most of the time.
You’re gonna have to stop doing that, I guess.
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| My boozy walls. |
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