Windowsill |
Day after day all around my house things look the same until they’re gone… these haunted shapes ever deceive us in the fading light. Through a crack in the curtain, I watch the steaming rooftops dissolve into the setting sun, and slowly the sky traps us in. ‘This is my room… this is where I wake up every morning, curtains closed. This is where my thoughts start and end.’ The last ray of light reaches out from behind the curtain and pours into the room, like something empty and tragic, something always there… and it felt almost familiar for a moment. ‘Not many men have been here… it means a lot to share my room with you.’ The radio screeches like remorseless cats and I sit down by the window to escape from it all. A corner shop just opened on our street and a few handymen hang Christmas lights around the window frames. I observe their beige shadows hammering behind the curtain. Their figures terribly distorted in the blinking lights, and I feel as if sucked into them, convulsing at every hiss of the radio. I wonder what meets their hammer. Each handful levitates for a few seconds, before falling gravely to the ground. The scene is deaf and I imagine the terrible sound they make. I see dark shapes in the corners, sticking out from the silver night. I like to scare myself. I imagine bodies and faces, but when the adrenalin is gone I’m usually disappointed. [...] I keep my hands under the sheets. I saw this movie once where something held her hand while she slept. Whose hand was I holding she gasped so I keep mine under the sheets. [...] Once I heard my name. Very low, very subtle. Very there. It was more like a statement. Alex. Yes that’s what I go by. That’s it that’s her up on top of the window, the Virgin and her dress I see her right up there looking at me in the midst of the city breath enacting biblical scenes. |