Lisa Murphy-Lamb
A New Room at TwentyFour It is my last night in the House of My Father. I sit on a wooden chair between two neatly made beds and look around the room at all that held comfort over the last twentyfour years. Since Jennifer ran, I’ve used her bed for my own secret library, piling books two high under her mattress, bolstering its sagging springs with biography and Russian tales, slipping murder under the canary yellow comforter with its straight stitching, and pushing noir under the pillows, out of sight. My books! All my books! Those I can’t take with me I disposed of in Little Free Libraries along the rise and dip streets of Ramsay. Now, under the bed only dust bunnies tumble where tales once simmered in wait. The wallpaper will stay, of course. Vertical lines of orange and brown flower-faces have looked down upon me as I slept, as I trembled, as I read by flashlight, in the dark, in secret, and during those times when Father banged out the back door to exchange bullshit stories with neighbourhood men on nearby porches. The wallpaper will stay, of course, chosen by a mother already gone.
64 | The Anti-Languorous Project
