Tipping the Cupboard

I wrote this story about six weeks ago, this is the whole thing..feedback aaaaaaalways wanted
I just got lots of Patrick Kavanagh poetry, I'm excited - from what I can tell so far I like it! He has an interesting balance between honest and simple and more misty images. awww


Tipping the Cupboard

The summer was long, and the heat low and unforgiving. I was dazed in the Summer. I did not know what I was doing in New York; the only thing that was constant was the strange disjointedness in which I live my days. I lie around in the belly; the bricky, low-rise buildings of Queens. I watch the bridges reaching for the city, like uncompromising fingers. We all sweated that Summer. New Yorkers slid along the pavement, slimy and sexy and I sweated on my way to the shop, from the shop, between shops and tried not to compare myself with the tall buildings of Manhattan.

In August I spent my nights alone, relaxed. Lloyd came to visit four times, I counted. You have to knock on the window, climbing down to the garden from the street, to get my attention. I’ve no doorbell; I took it off when it got jammed playing White Christmas.
There’s a tension between me and Lloyd.

I like it I like it I like it, that’s what I say. Occasionally my tongue gets stuck talking to him and we have to clean it with some laughing. I think he knows too, and maybe you, that if we don’t keep our mouths clean they just don’t work well anymore. Just rows of teeth.

He helped me get rid of the curtains. The left-hand corner of the window is the only place you can see down to the houses on the next street and I wanted to see that. Then we moved lots of my belongings into boxes – I considered moving – and they’re still here now. I left my favourite chair in here. Not in a box.

I like Queens because it is gutsy. I can watch the girls, fleshy-voiced, festering on corners. I smelt their perfume of promises. I do quite a lot in the front room (also my bedroom only now most of it is packed), and so a view is a good thing here.

Only I did all that watching in the evening and this here is the morning. Almost midday in fact, and I’m sitting in the chair at the window looking at nothing; nothing has started of the day and everything of the night is over. Today I will begin some business. I am yet undecided what it shall be but it will have a start and hopefully a finish and definitely a purpose. It will be of no loss or gain to me; I shouldn’t like it to hinge on that. I once learnt that if any being scaled down their ambitions to those that were within the grasp of their own nature, or the type of creature they were, and still achieved such ambitions, said being could be called all-powerful. Power is everywhere, shaded neon or stretched over the skyline or shaking hands and minds. I imagine this little room aglow with my omnipotence.

The boxes are packed against two of the walls; the left and the right. They don’t quite reach the tip of the wall, where the right meets the wall with the window; instead stands a hefty cupboard. It’s made of dark wood, with a bulge at the top that almost meets the ceiling and along the inside of that a thin line of gold. I have never seen above, nor the wall behind, nor what is below the cupboard. Lloyd once dropped a coin there and retrieving it was a difficult and dusty task. I have realised if I moved this cupboard I could stack nearly all of the boxes along the rest of the wall, thus making more of the wallpaper visible. It’s a flush green, far too potent a colour for the room but I enjoy it. I know Lloyd would agree; he has admired the colour many times.

The first attempt at my task fails. Of course – or so I soon think to myself – the cupboard will not lift with the likes of my spindly arms. Lifting will be no use; I try next lifting a single corner at a time, and pushing the corner as I lift. I can lift past the pale indents in the carpet, but still not far enough. I take several breaks and soon afternoon slides into view. I am often out of breath, my heart beating quicker and my breath catching up first from my chest, then my throat.

I expect Lloyd to visit today; it has been days since his last and he said he would be back within two or three. I make another lonely attempt after a longer rest; the cupboard will not move and now slants across the corner, half budged. The scene is unchanged apart from the cupboard; there is no odour, no hidden or lost objects behind the wardrobe. Slightly, the wallpaper is rubbed like a cheek from winter wind, turned a lighter green. In the next row of houses, out the window, the light is lustrous. It stalls at the wall into the single row of paving stones dipping down from the pavement, and the light reaching me is a tinny glow that barely fills the window frames.

I try two new approaches; I first try tipping and dragging the cupboard at a slant, and next lifting half the cupboard a bit off the floor and dragging it as I do so. Although difficult, this seems the most effective. I can only move the wardrobe a little at a time, and the doors often open at the same time so the movement altogether is slow. I hope to move it by the evening. With Lloyd’s help the cupboard will probably move easily.

I persist with the lifting and dragging, careful not to make the cupboard tip. I must not lift it more than two inches or so off the ground or the wardrobe will dip, and the doors probably open. I take breaks often; the wardrobe is heavy, the movements small and the wood digs grooves into my hands. After a few hours, I am conscious of life in the flat above me. There are no vicious noises, nothing loud, just the soft passing of feet. Not disturbing, but present all the same.

I stop around six o clock. An ache strains the tops of my shoulders, drags itself down the plane of my back. I lie on the bed, and after a while lift the covers. A short nap, and awake later, will probably fix the pain. Everything in the room is greying with evening; the brash confidence of the sun gone. I can feel night treading in, inevitable as the horizon.