Early Days, How It Was With Me

by John Grey

Nobody should live like this.
I do.
It’s a basement apartment.
It looks up at the sidewalk.
Its windows are barred.

The door lock is broken.
The shower head doesn’t spray.
It spits.
The sink tap leaks.
The pipes rattle.
The radiator only works sometimes.

Staring out,
I see a lot of shoes.
Looking down,
the occasional mouse
flees from my grasp.

Still, morning comes.
It just can’t help itself.
Light somehow 
finds its way
to my apartment.

I sit at the table, 
sip coffee,
and watch those shoes 
go marching by.
People are going somewhere,
anywhere,
everywhere but here.

I scratch my chin,
watch a mouse dart under the radiator
like it’s late for a better life.
And I think:
maybe I should follow.

---

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Willow Review, and the Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Latest books, Bittersweet, Subject Matters, and Between Two Fires, are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the MacGuffin, Touchstone, and Caesura.