At Home

with one last, last minute
thing to do completed
they scurry out of the house

with the door closing
silence settles slowly
awakening the kitchen clock

whose whirring resumes telling stories
while the radiator bubbles
and gurgles with delight

to which the faucet responds
with its monotonous drip, drip
drowned out as the

silence settles still further
and the people upstairs
begin living here



The Audio (podcast) version of this can be found here


I grew up in a five room apartment on the first floor of a three tenement house. I was the oldest of six and needless to say, the house got busy and noisy at times as we all did what we needed to do. The family was all going out but for some reason, I was being left behind, maybe I had something else to do, maybe I was sick, the circumstances were such that after the hustle and bustle of their leaving, I was left in the empty house. Except it was not really empty, as you hear in the reading, the house almost has a life of its own.