The room smells like sex – musty , strong, odorous, and muffling. But no such act took place, as I am the only resident here. Still, it is something I never took note of until I had stepped outside and came back in. There is no sex after all.

Instead I find that recently I have been very conscientiously listening to our fellow tenant-neighbor’s continuous arguments. I never hear the other woman say much in defense, or if she bothers at all, but for the sole voice that carries through the distance, it sounds like this,

“I hate you. You have ruined me. That man told you, and you never told me anything…you knew…the truck. You never tell me.”

You see what I mean? Fascinating ain’t it?

I recognize it is rather morbid to be so grotesquely inclined, but I can’t help myself. I try to refocus on the million and one things that goes through my mind, of which all ultimately accumulates to nothing when I try to put it into words. Puddy. At one point I go off the deep end again and imagine what it would be like to put a bullet through my temple. I’d imagine my body slumping against the wall immediately afterwards, slowly, the gravity pulls me atop my folded leg on the dining chair. Eventually the mass of atom will topple over, stay for the while, and I suppose that’s when somebody will come to realize the situation. As far as my imagination was concerned, it could be when the blood have dried on the wall. Crusted. Maybe.

The scariest part is that in my imagination it ended all too quickly. My life that is. Not as if that’s an unforeseen thing in such a situation. But still, too quickly is too quickly to wrap up and close up the wormhole of one’s life.

“I am here right now, with nothing to do, because I have no friends, because you took them away from me. You and your boyfriend…I hate you.”

I can’t say that I have never thought of sex as less than gratifying, but in that moment I fully came to the recognition of how visually ugly it can be. I imagined a scuffled middle-aged woman with silver lined hair, a weathered face bespoken of a true roofer. An outside job.

The raspy voice. The weed. The slight displaced accent – a lisp? The upstanding baby hairs. Those fray ends, like an unbecoming halo around the face…

“You are selfish. You are ignorant, and selfish and unapologetic…I can’t stand you right now. I want you out.”

Slam.

I become fully attentive to their distress. I think I start to realize why I am so irrevocably attracted to their disaster.

“I can’t stand you right now. Can you hear me? I-don’t-want-you-here.“

I am waiting for the break. The break off. Heightened senses, when did the disquieting surreptitious tingling of my spine get raised in anticipation? When will the twisted desire come to fruition, be satisfied?

It’s because they – or that prominent voice – is doing something I will never be able to do but want to. If I were to release my tension in such a way, my voice would escalate to phenomenal scales. Like wadding through muddy water with Hades and the pool of souls. Such scantily mapped grey area and they all grasp at you so feverishly…Too full in reminder of an unrecognized child; dulled edges.

But how this woman contains her voice. A warbling drunk alcoholic. They are the words of abandonment. They are brutal. It never wavers too far from its original tonality – dark, rusty, grey…

Something old from 2 months ago. Interesting how words still speak after they have been laid down. It’s like death is nonexistent.