Near Window 12

A visitor

Hot water thrumming into a red mug, news on, Corona Virus is said 17 times in the first 7 minutes, sun coming gently into the courtyard like a friend placing their hand on your elbow at a party to let you know they’re there.

Last night I dreamed I went clubbing. Last night I dreamed a trumpeter and a trombone player jumped into a river and were swept away by it whilst playing happy birthday. Last night I dreamed of breakfast cereal. Last night I dreamed of hillsides and mountains, last night I dreamed of you, and I wonder what you’re doing, and how your mum is, and if everything is alright. Last night I dreamed blossom petals fell from a really big tree and I danced in them the way Winona Ryder dances in the snow in Edward Scissorhands. Last night I dreamed I smoked a cigarette. Last night I dreamed of clouds.

Cold water thrumming into a cup. News on. 421 dead today in France, then some words I don’t understand, everyone is upset and they speak too fast and our internet is broken and the sun is shining and I can’t see any trees from here and the blackbird hasn’t sung once today. 

I am so bored. 

Just what is it that you want to do?

We Want 2 b free 2 do what we want to do & we wanna get loaded n we wanna have a good time so that’s what we’re gonna do we’re gonna have a gd time we’re gna have a party

Away baby let’s go

Clink of a bottle on the rim of a glass. The microwave dings. The music starts and stops and starts again. We drew in Mario. I imagined a feather fluttering and then out again. A fly came to visit yesterday afternoon, a clandestine rendezvous, I had nothing to offer him but a cracker, not knowing what flies like, and not wanting to share the Cointreau.

Bonjour monsieur fly, say I, would you like to stay for a cracker? The fly whizzes around the room in response which I take to be the affirmative and I leave him a cracker on the table and I say what do u think about the state of the economy? The fly whizzes around the room which I think means what does it matter if the capitalist framework tanks? Perhaps that will mean that we can build something new from its ashes. So I say very astute monsieur fly, are u sure u don’t want a tea? And he whizzes around the room, which I take to be the negative, which is good bc I was only being polite and I actually cba to make a tea. So I say have you read the Hunchback of Notre Dame? I’m reading it and it’s very good. You’re probably the only person who has managed to see the Birdseye view Hugo talks of in chapter 3 – do you think it beautiful? The fly lands on the curtain and says Paris is most beautiful when seen from the air in high spring, when the rooftops range away from you like the ragged edges of a hastily cut hem and the freshness of the morning distills the air so that it looks like heaven. The bells, when they ring, sound like angels calling. Before anyone is awake but the baker, before the smog cloud has risen to the roof of the sky, before sound is born, that is when Paris is most beautiful. I look at the fly on the curtain, I do not agree. oh no, Monsieur fly, says I, oh no. Paris is most beautiful when it is alive and awake and full of people. When the boulangerie lady says “Avec Ceci?” When the bus driver is grumpy. When there are children laughing. When there are verres on terrasse. When it is alive and breathing and full like a hive buzzing making honey and it rumbles like an old machine. Paris breathes, Paris murmurs, Paris shrieks and cries and howls and roars. She is not only beautiful when she sings. The fly looks disgruntled and boops himself into the window as if to say What would u know? You’re in here and not out there. There is no Paris for u anymore. Only these walls and these windows and your closest boulangerie. Paris is mine and it is always quiet now and I like it that way. I think monsieur fly has rather outstayed his welcome. Fuck you monsieur fly. He boops the window again, takes another turn of the room, and then quite without warning he zooms past my head and out of the window as if to say: fuck you, too. He didn’t even touch his cracker.