Poetry: Apartment N°19

This poem was made in December 2020 as part of a final project for a class where I studied The Madres de la Plaza de Mayo movement and the impacts of the military dictatorship on Argentina. This is a fictional poem, inspired by studying the events in Argentine history and realizing this poem is a part of an exploration of the effects on my understanding of the world.

Apartment N°19

I hear the sound of my keys as they jingle

I unlock the door

Slowly and then all at once 

I take in the room 

The apartment

A snapshot of a moment 

A snapshot of who he was

There’s a dirty coffee cup on the table 

Some breadcrumbs keep the plates company

A crumpled up napkin rests by the chair

Some of the cupboards are left wide open 

A pan on the stove

Dishes in the sink 

In his room, the window is cracked

A pair of pants, a used T-shirt, and a single sock on the floor 

The lamp by his bedside table is on 

The smell of cigarettes and citrus still dances around the room

Slowly, he is being wafted out

His keys fall from my hand to the floor

I, too, collapse to the ground

I’m thinking a million thoughts 

I’m trying to pin one down but they keep flooding in 

like bills, taxes, 

unwanted, unwelcome 

I think

About our future

About what we had together

About the family that we could have built

About the person he is

*About the person he was

The sound of his laugh echoes through my head

I can see how he scrunches his face when reading a good book

** So I think about the person he is 

About where he is or who he’s with 

More than anything I think about how 

He left thinking he was coming back 

He probably went to the store for some bread

Or maybe just across the street to get some cigarettes 

But I know that he was coming back. 

He was coming back.