OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS

Creative writing and the imagination allow us to explore other worlds, other lives, that might have been ours had we followed a different path.

THE ROOM

The room is furnished just enough
to qualify as furnished: a bed, a table,
chairs that look the worse for wear;
but it’s affordable and so I say
I’ll take it and hand over cash.
She nods and, with a downward glance,
leaves me to settle in.
I sit down on the threadbare bed
and study patterns on the wall,
the paper faded and forlorn,
the picture of a weeping clown
and, by the door, a pitted mirror.
The window faces to a street,
with graffiti and shuttered shops
and nothing, dog or cat or man,
is there as evidence of life.
Quite suddenly the walls encroach
and all the ghosts of tenants past:
the failed, afraid or just plain old,
assail me and the room feels cold.