The bedroom seemed sterile
despite the crumbs and dust,
which no doubt lurked beneath
the wardrobe’s husk, beyond a Hoover’s
penetrating limits.
Emptied of treasure,
and junk like bubble bath gift sets
when I would have preferred
a shower [of money], and the guilt
that accompanies drawers stuffed
with this knowledge.
Like a hasty murderer, I filled bin liners
with unwanted cosmetics, carrying these
out to the wheelie bin, lowering the lid
over a series of birthdays on which relatives
proved they didn’t care to know me.
The bunk-bed promised to enfold
within itself, the hours built up over years
of creaking frustration half-disguised as
self-exploration; likewise, the eruption of stew
the night I’d spewed up the bowlful consumed
after ten days of food deprivation.
One or two tell-tale blood stains
if you knew where to look; the floor, the duvet;
the jeans I’d worn down A & E. An array of blades
locked in a safe, were packed and waiting for me.
Tidy. Empty. Posters stripped and rolled into
blank canvasses, only showing their reverse side,
like my mother showed her perverse side
when forbidding the sticking of civil rights
campaigning on the window pane, in a “tacky display”;
I bit back my rage that day, as always.
Leaving a couple of items behind, wanting
the place to still be mine for a short time,
I was disappointed when they brought round the car
to drop them off, along with boxes of stuff
from the attic; things they’d once taken without asking
[they’d forgotten my fan, as my sister’s was broken
and we felt its nonattendance that summer,
propelling us towards Argos catalogues];
ornaments and stuffed dogs I’d wanted to give to
an Oxfam shop, but my mother had refused –
now they claimed our space, as musty issues.
I returned a week later, a bemused visitor
at the sight of my old refuge freshly painted
and used for storage of my sister’s excess.
The bunk bed still balanced on three legs, but
a desk took up the other side;
one I recognized as previously mine – it had
disappeared, without explanation, when they decided
on decoration as a solution
to “the gloom” of an eighteen-year old’s room
in her absence; I had returned to chaos, mess
and lack of a desk [serious business for a young writer].
Sister explained that hers had got broken, so mine was given
as a replacement. It had been too long to feel anything
but intrigue and amusement.
A house cleansed of me [and my passive charity]
was an interesting place to be.
