Empty

 
I have been empty for ages, all
alone. No happy family giving e comfort and company. Just the damp and the ever
dripping tap and the echo of a clock long gone.




How I wish I was not a damp dank apartment,
but a spacious house. They would fix me up then, re-plaster my walls, bring me
to life with their love, and return me my soul.



I’d have a proud front lawn and
children would run down my halls. Teenagers would sob in the bedrooms, and play
music and slam doors. Mum and Dad would play happy families, kissing on the
doorstep for the neighbours while unpaid bills overstuff my kitchen drawers.
There would be gossip and intrigue and murmurs of “if walls could talk” and
smugly I’d sit and think “Ah but we listen”.



I wish I were a house instead of
an apartment. Or even just a better apartment, it isn’t my fault, it is my
views. Well I can’t help my natural aspects can I? I didn’t ask to be built
next to the fish packing  factory and the
local prison.



I hear some apartments have nice
fireplaces, to hang stockings from and put trinkets on, instead of a hole where
the invading gasmen condemned a leaky gas fire and ripped it all out. The shame.
 The humiliation. The nakedness of that
hole, so gaping and exposed. That was when I knew I was spoiled, that no-one
would play out their life in me again.



While it was just the crumbling
plaster and the half pulled down wallpaper, I still had hope. Perhaps he man
who lived in e would take care of me one day, or move on so that someone who
could look after me would move in. He moved out long ago now, and no one else
has replaced him. Only the ivy wants to be inside me.



I don’t mean to moan and groan at
night , nor bang my pipes so loud. I try to be warm and welcoming. Not that
there is anyone to welcome anymore. Not since they tramped in in their big
boots, ripping up my carpets with no regard for my dignity, exposing my damp
and my woodworm.



I remember people who lavished
care on me, painting and repainting walls to cover damp stains, laughing here,
loving here, crying here. Giving me something to watch. All of them left me, moved
on as soon as their hopes and dreams and families and bank balances grew too
large for me. Even the squirrel that came in the winter visits me no more.



I wish I was a house, instead of
an apartment.