scuttling across the floors of silent seas
that’s Eliot,
who won’t have known an Artex ceiling,
but did know loneliness, I think.
Do you?
I’m sure of it –
I can picture you walking in your skirt suit to a
viewing, keys and folder in your handbag ready, thinking
about how you’ll sell this couple in their thirties on a
grubby studio flat, eighth floor – great views up here –
you let them in. Gesture outwards from the centre of the
room, point at the kitchen, making sure to leave the
cupboard doors and fridge unopened – you’ve learned
the hard way how mice droppings, forgotten food, some
mould can spoil a sale. Instead you pull the door – a little
stiff! – onto a tiny bathroom and the shower curtain
billows with the sudden change in air. Sad and stained, it
seems to reach for you, and you step back somewhat
disgusted – though you try to make it seem as though
you’re making room for them to peer into the space not
big enough to walk into together. They ask if they can
have a moment to look round alone – of course! Take all
the time you need. You move towards the front door then
you pause – the neighbour who was just outside the flat
when you came in had looked a little dodgy and you’d
felt his eyes all up and down your legs when you’d
walked by. Instead you pull a sliding door with all your
strength onto a balcony so narrow that you have to slide
in sideways, bum against the glass. Below, an
ambulance is parked-up and you wonder if there’s
somebody inside. You check your phone. A car parks
badly, blocks the road, another honks its horn
impatiently. You look out across the grey buildings and
squint and think about the tiny lift the three of you had
crammed inside to get up to that flat – stainless steel,
embossed, dented as though beaten-up – touch of the
abattoir about it, cunt spray-painted, partly scrubbed-off,
but still visible on one wall – the couple looked uneasy as
the lift creaked and shuddered up the floors and you had
stood in silence, though now you think you should have
