There is a window in the apartment
of the floor above me. Its decades-old
outline creates a picture frame
visible from my bed.
At night the lamp on the ancient nightstand
drags itself to life. It illuminates the sitting room
in dusty hues that remind me of small-town funeral parlors
and the clicking of old women’s pearls.
I have never seen whoever resides in the home
that belongs to that window,
but I think about what kind of person they must be.
I wonder, sometimes, if I am like their apartment,
colored in with the stale decorations of existence
and nothing to prove I was there but lights on timers.
Is there someone still alive in here, or have I become
just a body in the sitting room?
Ra is a writer from the American Midwest who pulls on her own life experiences to write on mental illness, grief, and survival. In college she studied American Sign Language and Creative Writing and more recently co-hosted the literary podcast Choice Words with fellow poet, Gracy Boes.
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