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A dormitory room begins sterile and featureless.
Mine receives frequent improvements:
Carpeting, custom furnishings, posters, even tapestries.
Always filled with stereophonic sound,
My room is perfect.
Why then, do I hate to return to it at night?
 
It's 6:00 AM on Runkle 4th and people are going to bed.
I gratefully accept the invitation to stay here on a spare mattress.
My perfect room feels too empty to sleep in.
 
Across the street live two friends of mine.
They sleep in the loft of a crowded single.
Dirty clothes carpet the floor.
The paint is peeling and the curtains don't match.
Their couch, rescued from the junk man, is falling apart.
Music crackles out of the table radio.
What an awful room.
Why is it so hard to leave?



27 October 1982

by Bill Cattey