San Francisco

San Francisco Sandra Lim poetry My older neighbor on Rose Street once showed me the contents of his rent-controlled apartment, just up the stairs from mine. He was a hoarder, living in a state of tragic grandeur that his circumstances did not entirely support. Recurringly, his latest boyfriend would flee from him. When we met later in the alley to take out the trash, we would reliably turn into two lumps of fear. What was more terrifying than being abandoned? Downstairs, I was a collector, too, with my need to interpret and sort everything. But we didn’t tire of the spectacle of our private lives, though many initiatives went badly wrong. I was altogether more anxious about being light-minded. My railroad apartment was a small cloth diary with a lock and key. It was my real life, or what so often passes among us for real life. And for all his possessions, my neighbor dreamed of having a Petit Trianon with a vast garden to walk in and dog roses lavishing a limitless dining room table. Of course, there was no table, because there was no dining room. Obviously, there was never a garden to walk in. 130 | SANDRA LIM ...