provocative tweet:
Renter friend stole room from vacant apt. adjoining his, broke through wall into bedroom, sealed up door: Scot free.
inspired the following - not exactly a poem, more like flash fiction. And if it gives you a chuckle, that's cool.
Out of the Nutshell: A Minor Drama in Three Scenes
“I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of
infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams”. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II,
Scene ii
He
peered in at the dismal one room apartment, shrugged and said, “OK. I’ll take
it.” The building was almost empty; only two other tenants in the ten-suite
building which slumped like a fallen soufflé on the corner of Here and Nowhere.
Although they came with the high ceilings and crown moldings of a bygone age of
grace, none of the apartments were large; mostly one bedroom, with decades of
paint slapped over wallpaper, encasing bobby pins, nails and the odd insect.
Still, they were more than he could afford. This one sad room would have to do.
Unfortunately, it faced east. Even a blanket over the window didn’t block the
sun as he tried to fall sleep after coming home from his night job sweeping ashes at the animal crematorium.
Weeks,
months, a year passed with no new tenants, no sign of the landlord or even a
maintenance crew. The building was as quiet as the crematorium after the
burners shut down. Night after night in his restless sun-soaked sleep, a
voice whispered and wheedled with growing insistence: “There’s no one in the
apartment next door, and just a thin wall between you and a real bedroom – one
that faces west.”
Weeks,
months, a year passed. He slept quite soundly, now.
