The Neighbors Upstairs
have been bowling,
I assume with a makeshift ball and a ten-pin setup of nice lamps.
And I think one of them won, because now there’s music
and they’re dancing in their favorite wooden clogs.
I wish you could hear them, Kate, you’d make more sense
out of them than I can, you always knew how to pick out
the melodies from a cacophony.
My upstairs neighbors are in love, they’re in
love love, the kind of thing that makes worlds stop turning.
The kind of thing that burns bridges, the kind of thing
that raises the dead. Their apartment is golden
in the knocked-over lamplight. The other afternoon
I came home on my lunch break, and they had set up
a tennis net, just so they could play without scoring a point –
their score was love, love forever as they volleyed back and forth,
knocking into tables and chairs, into anything in their way
just so the set wouldn’t end.
Every evening, they cook
a ten-course meal, just so they can use every kitchen
instrument they have, just so they can take
every pot and pan out and bang them against each other,
then eat sun-dried tomatoes on focaccia and cold soup
that’s meant to be cold and they bring out the blowtorch
for dessert, because it’s the best way to make creme brulee.
Afterwards, they make love on the rickety bedframe
and their great dane howls to sing them to sleep.
If you were here, Kate, we’d invite them to supper,
show them how to cook a meal without letting all of Brooklyn
know what was on the plate. After dinner, we’d give them
leftovers, pasta and pesto and a slice of cake,
and tell them to just bring back the tupperware
the next time they drop by. Maybe they could
teach you how to bowl, and you’d finally hit a pin or two.
But I don’t think a miracle could improve your aim.
If you were here, Kate, I’d stick a pillow over my ears
to muffle them out. You’d call me a codge, and I’d tell you
that sometimes young people just have too much
life in them, and can’t they save some for
the rest of us? You’d say that youth is wasted
on the young, and I’d tell you if we were young
again, we’d do it right. I know, I know, we’d make
a whole host of new mistakes, but if we had
that time back, I wouldn’t waste a second of it.
I guess I have plenty of time these days; if you
saw all the time I spent just puttering around,
you’d admonish me, say that life is wasted
on the living, but I’d say that it doesn’t feel much
like living without you here. It’s just the noise,
with no one to make sense of it with.
Sofia Hughes is a poet and printmaker based at Purdue University. She is a senior, pursuing a double major in creative writing and computer science. She carves linocut prints and sells her work at markets. She writes about absurdity, queerness, domesticity, and her fascination with improv comedy. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Collision Literary Magazine and 30 North.
