You know the fascinating thing about this place,
this flat you rent us?
No you don’t.
The cul-de-sac outside this window
where the minibuses are is like an amphitheatre –
not in aspect, Ava, you understand,
but sonically –
as in,
sound behaves quite strangely here,
trapped and bounced,
distorted, amplified –
some architectural fluke
the way the houses here are grouped,
walls on walls on walls around
that central car park
and there’s a point, a place, just
visible from our window, that is, Ava,
a kind of acoustic sweet spot –
stand right there and whisper –
and I will hear you – crystal clear –
as though your voice were being piped into this flat,
what would you tell me, Ava?
Strange quirk indeed.
Interesting but not exactly
beneficial to our lives.
See, all the drama of the street plays out right
there – exactly there.
A couple arguing at 4 am; the minibus manager’s
morning gossip; night-time/daytime drug deals; a local
lawyer talking to a local cat – see you in court! She
laughs… and every one of our neighbour’s pleading
phone calls to his mother…
that neighbour, Ava,
lives in the flat behind our flat, we share
a wall – he mirrors us, spatially at least –
and in this way
I feel connected to him.
Often I will run a bath and, lying there, will
hear him enter his identical tiled room, kneel down at his
same toilet and throw up.
