One-Room Walk Up

My New York world

So small

Yet with so many archived impressions

Three floors up

It was

Musty smells

Vying for my attention

Against the sound of TVs

Telephone calls

Noisy plumbing

I loved my little hole in the wall

It’s window’s view

An airshaft

With just a sliver of sky above

Next door was an aging accordion player from the old country

Serenading his dementia-dominated mind

Often with such tearful pleas for love

Mostly, though there was a quietness

Surrounding the emptiness

Of a single hanging light bulb

Above an old walnut table of tenant carvings

Found on the curb on a Bulky Junk Day

And then…

There was the Underwood atop the table

Its keys worn

Its ribbon frayed

Its output

Lifesaving

Just me

Some words

The resident spider and his web

His patience for a fly’s mistake

Not like the impatience I had with myself

But…

There was no time to waste

For 10,000 hours of writing practice

Didn’t just come and go

So many silent nights

So many noisy mornings

The Fortune Teller’s bare feet on the floor above

The echo of her relieving herself

After a night’s lovemaking

The coffee grinder rattling the slumber of all

Below me…

The often sobbing of a child

And then me finding I too was weeping

Without tears

Without…

Sixty years later

The words came as saving grace

Her words

The “withouts” ceased

The “withins” emerged

The connection to another

A love-partner that was the beginning of the final chapter

A connected life finally living

In a three-room minimalist palace

Ground floor

Clear view of the sky