Old Rooms

There is a longing that can only be felt in old rooms. The geometry of the doorways can try and suppress it, box it into separate cells, but it will meander as flows of unseen breath. Shift around the hem of the sofas, wash over pale lamp shades and wood molding. Linger for unknowable time beneath a bedframe.

Consisting of innumerable wisps, faint chills of missing, mute voices, of low exhales, and of feet on cold floors. From their source and destination, which are indistinguishable. The walls here are off-white and have lost the days of warm bread on the spindly table. Where the basin once swam with broken sun, its faucet arches in depletion. A hand-cloth sits on a sallowed sill, sordid and beautiful. Crumpled, dry gingham.

Vacant, a room near bursts with tarnished treasures. But vacant. There is a fine grey heather everywhere, tucking each obelisk, vale, and gallery of flat shirts and glassware into unmolested sleep. The light dimly, reluctantly ventures through small, high windows and sends its rays crashing amongst the towers. But forbidden in shadow, a crack barely lies. The fissure pulses. From within, a beat which could be the thrum of a throat, lost somewhere in the walls. Dangling over the lip of a shelf, barely afloat in the sea of black that coagulates behind the door, is a tie, paisley and cool.