Poem of the Week, My Apartment, Tyler Bigney

My Apartment

by Tyler Bigney

I’ve written so many poems
about my little apartment,
what’s one more?
This poem is about the lady
two floors up, who forgot,
or didn’t care to take
her Christmas decorations down.
I didn’t care myself, but
I heard the neighbours talking
one night over barbecue
in the back of the building.
How they think she makes
the apartment look bad,
makes it look like one of
those welfare apartments
with poor people whose
children run around all hours
of the night and scratch cars
with their bikes in the parking lot.
I nodded my head, not so much
in agreement, but because
I thought if I defended
the old lady who forgot
to take her Christmas
decorations down, I’d be left
out of the barbecue. And
those hamburgers looked delicious.
It was a couple months
after the barbecue when
I was coming home from work
and decided to go up there
myself and see what was up
with the tinsel and lights
still up in the window.
I knocked once, twice, and
when she didn’t answer
after my third and final knock,
I called the police.
Turns out my hunch was right,
and the old lady
wasn’t an incompetent
neighbour, no, she up and died
in there and I heard rumour
months later, that’d she been dead
in there since November.
But the neighbours shrugged it off,
saying, that’s what life is like
when you get old: you don’t
know anybody, all your friends
die around you, or live away,
and move on with their lives
and most seniors find themselves
alone after their loved ones
have passed, and a good amount
of seniors commit suicide.
Not out of boredom, but fear.
Well that got me thinking,
and I spent that night awake
scared of growing old, taking
notice for the first time
of the seconds ticking
on the clock. I took the batteries out,
and busied myself
until the sun came up
and the streets came to life, and then
I walked the four blocks
to the university campus
and put up ads,
looking for a room-mate.