The endless light.
The shift of a thousand bodies
crying laughing fucking.
Hot airless corridors strip lit
and prison-like.
They huddle over their
guilty cigarettes,
hounded out into the bleak
dampness
to shuffle their feet
through wet leaves,
inhaling the warm laundry air
pumped through a vent
and into their smoke-blackened lungs.
Will the last vestiges of detergent,
clinging to infinite molecules of moisture
cleanse those
feeble organs, or be rejected with the cool clean air,
to be scattered,
a pollutant?
Would that I were away,
dissolved in vapour,
a mere shimmer in the heavy air.
My ceiling hums with the very life that fills this place.
As if too many heartbeats
have synchronised,
giving up just one pulse.
I put a finger to my wrist,
and count off the beats
to the rhythm of banging doors,
racing footsteps,
coughs and futile curses.
Am I right? Tell me!