Poetry | Rooms I have lived in by Ellie Taylor

A room only a little bigger than my arm-span

The door: number 3 on a metal circle at the top left-hand corner.

a heavy lock, it slammed if you let it

5 neighbors to share the thin walls with

Red carpet, red curtains, a red pin-board on the wall.

not an easy color to work with –

four sets of fairy-lights would have to do.

A desk of light-brown wood, 4 drawers, and an office chair which I spun agitatedly on,

whilst I wrote essays titled Chivalry and Romance; The Glorious Revolution; Intro to Christianity.

A narrow bed with a sagging mattress, and a shower room which flooded when I shaved my legs,

the floor just wide enough for one guest; sometimes we squeezed three in and woke up in a loving bundle of girls in pajamas.

Summer came, I left the room empty for a new occupant

Come October

A room at the back of a terraced house which looked over the fields

From the ceiling, two walls sloped away diagonally – crucially, white

Easier to style. I blutacked photos on the walls. Took them down for ‘house inspection’ days

White sheets and pale pink pillows –

the bed creaked. It was comfier than the last though

I got ill in the cool mornings of the autumn. The room watched me weep – curl up – not leave the bed.

The worst nights of my life

The ones I thought I could not survive.

I left for three weeks and when I came back,

the light came in pink and gold in the afternoon. It sat on the walls and said

Life can be beautiful now –

After walks along the river in May, I emptied the room and said goodbye

Six months at home

Then an attic room, where the roof sloped down and cut out half of the space;

just because you can fit a double bed – doesn’t mean you should

The first day, I dragged the desk beside the bed

so that I could sit at it more comfortably.

The walls already badly marked, I blutacked to my heart’s content

Bought flowers when I could afford them, because they made me happy

but also because the carpet was brown and ugly

A huge Velux window:

a square of blue or grey, lilac or gold, red or pink

Depending on the weather

I opened it in the mornings and let the air in

in this, my final year to breathe in that particular air

I frequented the library. The desk still gave me a cricked neck

I emptied the room. I sat on the ugly carpet

looked up at the grey today square in the sloped roof

Exhaled. Thought –

Now to unknown rooms

Maybe with blu-tac marks,

maybe with lumpy mattresses, and paper-thin walls, and wonky walls

Certainly, there will be tears

shouting

happiness, and laughter.

Fragments of life, scattered around

In the rooms I have lived in

Graphic courtesy of Izzie Armitage