Apartment 402

By: Elizabeth Page

The hall is lined with garbage bags

Air thick with sweet tobacco, rotting burgers and fries

A forgotten hotel

But not entirely- 

The rent is still collected by a large man, in small bills

By the week

We sit at the top of the fire escape 

I wish I could feel the fresh air from the lake, but it’s blocked by main street stores

Stagnant, the alley smells of wet cardboard and old shoes

We watch as a man stands at the corner begging for change

As if we’re more than one paycheck away

From joining him

We smoke Canadian Classics and drink fruit punch coolers 

Amy wants to see whose tongue goes red first

I swish the cool liquid and hold it in my mouth until it feels warm and sugary like cough syrup

I remember my mother

Swallow it down quick 

And stick out my tongue

Staggering from the rail to the door I wander back to apartment 402

Amy trails behind

We lay on the bed 

A coffee can holds up one end of the mattress

We smoke the room blue

dreaming we’re anywhere but here

The neighbours are fighting again - something crashes

What would we see if they crashed right through the thin wall between us?

I remember when my father took my bedroom door away

Would we feel exposed? 

Maybe the secrets we keep

Would become a part of them, too

Amy’s hand touches mine

I see her tears, but she doesn’t want me to know

What is home now? Is home where Amy is?

It feels like anything but

If home is where the heart is

I may never find another

The television in the corner plays Bugs Bunny

We pretend not to hear it.

It makes me miss my little brother

Our pain ebbs and flows with blue spirals of smoke in the fading afternoon light

I hear muffled whispers through the wall

If there’s hope for them maybe there’s hope for us, too

We walk to the coffee shop across the street

Pulling change from our pockets we order stained cups of caffeine to take the edge off

The waitress glares as Amy lights up a smoke

We don’t fit here

Old men gather to tell stories, argue politics 

They give the waitress a hard time

Dani pulls up to the curb and we hop into her van

With the window down I breathe in the end of summer

And try to release my regrets

Dani turns the music up

Darkness fills the world outside

I lean into Amy as we ride through town

We crawl into bed at midnight

Waking as a meaty fist pounds on the door

It’s too early and I’m still lost in my dreams
A menacing man stands in the hall

We scrape together the cash

To stay another week