from Insulae

You slept on an old spring cot. The walls were thin, the granite cold. A rotary

phone was wedged under the wardrobe with an alarm clock from a country that

no longer exists. Piles of cheap paperbacks. In the hall, a brittle wooden drawer

full of coins, discontinued currency. You saw rooftops branched with antennae.

The view is often hazy, a pestled evening in pastels. There’s a desk there,

and postcards taped to the wall. A stem of foxglove in a plastic bottle. You can

hear the tram spark and wheeze, the streets breathe. Pale sodium lights bathing

the night a perennial orange. Interminable in-between.

There, from the room, an alley of empty warehouse backs. Red and brick

and red a late summer catatonia fading into ruddied autumn. Cheap lace

curtains. No sun but a rattling window unit and screened-in porch.

A wobbly wooden staircase down to the dumpsters. In the sliver of kitchen

an old gas stove. You remember linoleum. The brick-crumbled edge and

smoked tone to days. Lost causes; monuments of grey. One evening you

found a man passed out at the top of the stairs. The hall was painted a pale

green. Later, someone said something about a suicide next door. There

was a laundromat on one corner. There was a church.

The room received a lot of light, especially in the morning. Wardrobe built

into the wall, a bed, a small bookshelf, a sliding door. That was all. White.

A thin balcony. But what you don’t really remember now: most of the rest.

An open space. The countertop black., the cupboards probably white, the

surrounding walls too. The bathroom, however, was tiled in turquoise.

A reproduction of Feuerbach’s Iphigenia, staring out to sea, in a frame by

the mirror. You remember when everything was still under construction.

Had not yet begun. From the windows, a few distant fingers of palm.

Everything a dark grey that, in certain light, looks indigo. High-ceilinged,

the room faced the tree-lined and statued street, the bedroom a brick wall.

Perpetual shadow. An old futon, an old desk, an old end table. There was

a small balcony, and in the bathroom an old freestanding tub. Black-and-

white tiles. Much of that city too had once been burned. You were just

over twenty. Do you remember the carefree days of suicide? Edie nights,

you called them. Can you say the year was particularly long? Three, four

lovers maybe, but you were as distant and awkward as always.

That June was hot. You’d just recently moved out and into a basement

apartment. All the official things would take a few years. The building was

older, from when the area was still the country. Mornings were a manic

sound of children, days a high-pitched whine of scooters and the drone

of a dehumidifier. There wasn’t much light, but a large bed, a wardrobe,

and a chest-of-drawers. On top of a moving box an old Einaudi of Pavese

shorts. The café on the corner had bottled beer and it wasn’t far to the park,

which is where you spent your time, watching the swallows, the dust, and,

when there were any, the clouds. At night you’d lie awake, the air full of

jasmine and cats. Must. You ended up staying through autumn.

At least one of the panes in the warped and brittle frame was cracked

enough to need a newspaper. You never bothered to replace it. From the

desk, you looked across a small patch of gravel at another rowhouse,

another upstairs window. Sometimes, a face would appear between

the curtains, then vanish. You didn’t know it, but just a few years before a

poet had died just a few doors up the street. The Greek Revival is brittle

wood, and brick. The room is yellow and small and has a ceiling fan. On

the wall, there’s a thriftstore reproduction of Goya’s little boy in red with

all his birds and cats, next to him, a postcard of a coffin.

You arrived on a cold, rain-filled night in mid-September, with a taxi. You

were entirely unfamiliar with the neighborhood and did not know how

long you would stay. It was someone else’s room. Frail double-glazing

onto a bar, a tiny convenience store, a restaurant. There was a sizeable bed

with a large, socialist realist-like mural on the dark behind it, there was

a dress on a hangar, a wooden wardrobe in the corner, covered with boxes

of photo equipment. The flat was large, and there was a gallery space in

its middle. A long hallway. Two more rooms. The kitchen. You don’t think

you had insomnia then, and it didn’t really snow, but that winter, it was

endless.