Room to Notice
“What makes you happy?”
The question arrived
like a bill
I wasn’t expecting.
I didn’t know
what it wanted from me.
I don’t wake up
searching for happiness.
I wake up thinking
about what must be paid,
who must be called,
what needs to be done,
what will become worse
if I don’t get to it first.
There is always something
waiting for my attention.
Later, we spoke
about an apartment
we both shared.
They remembered
the archways,
the parquet floors,
the character of the place.
They spoke of it
as though the apartment
held us gently.
I remembered the mice.
The roaches scattering
when we turned on the lights.
The cold settling
into our clothes,
following us from room to room,
as though winter
had been given a key.
The radiator,
buried into the wall,
giving us nothing.
The water running
cold over my hands
while I waited for warmth
that did not come.
A slumlord
who answered requests for heat
with feigned ignorance,
who turned neglect
into harassment,
who made our asking
for what we were owed
a claim
to his own victimhood.
They remembered
the curve of the archways.
I remembered watching
for what might run
beneath them.
They remembered
the parquet floors.
I remembered the cold
rising through them.
They remembered
the character.
I remembered
what it cost
to live inside it.
Same rooms.
Same years.
Two different lives
inside the same walls.
Perhaps happiness
is easier to name
when you aren’t always counting.
A meal is never only a meal.
It is bus fare.
It is medicine.
It is tomorrow’s breakfast.
It is something else
you may have to go without.
Rest is never only rest.
It is everything
that remains undone
while you are lying down.
Pleasure is never only pleasure.
It must first explain itself
to necessity.
Still, joy comes.
A song from another room.
Something warm to eat.
Hot water.
A quiet hour
that asks nothing of you.
Sometimes happiness arrives,
and I don’t recognize it.
I am busy.
My hands are full.
So perhaps the question
isn’t, “What makes you happy?”
Perhaps it is:
“What has your life
given you enough room
to notice?”
They remembered
the archways,
the parquet floors,
the character.
I remembered
trying to stay warm
inside it