A Rundown Apartment

As I stood there
where the wind chafed
my chapped skin,
a howl of mourning
played on the reeds of plumbing.

Wind who is a friend,
is cruel at times.
She insists on playing
off-note keys
of the broken piano
and pries open
the closets of my bosom.
And then out come tumbling:
the shrieks of laughter,
the wafts of sunday brunch,
the moans, groans and sighs.
All sights and sounds of human existence.
Hurriedly I shoo her off
closing the doors on
reminiscences painful.

Fire had been their family member.
A recalcitrant child,
admonished and often neglected,
whose rage had burnt
down my contacts human.

Rain is the cruelest
visitor of all,
sprouts life,
on my barren facade.
Every little root
tearing into me,
undressing me
for the voyeuristic world
to peep into me.

But I have begun
my descent
via the narrow stairs
into the cold darkness
of the basement
where they say
the kindred spirits
of my kind reside.

A few moments more
for I let the pariahs
who had sought me
to escape into oblivion
and then will I crumble
into myself.

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