Between staying and leaving

At times, being inside can feel no different from being outside. It can feel like standing in the dark, like an out-of-season Christmas tree left at the end of a corridor. For those who belong nowhere, the hallway stretches long and cold. It is no longer a passage but a place of waiting, with no clear end.

The speaker remains inside a building yet seems to have nowhere to stay. In a structure filled with windows from the first to the tenth floor, he occupies a space between the fourth and fifth floors, a figurative 4.5th level. He waters plants, eats bananas, and drinks lukewarm water as he passes the time, confined to the smallest of spaces. Used without care and having forgotten how to speak, he lives quietly, almost like a plant. “I must leave here tomorrow,” he says, suggesting a departure not entirely of his own choosing. The final line, “I will not return,” reads as both statement and forewarning. It leaves a narrow opening in the poem. Anyone who has stood at the margins may recognize that suspended hour between evening and night.

It is a Sunday, the building empty. The corridor stretches long, and at its end stands a Christmas tree. It glows at intervals in the dark, as if left behind. The lights flicker, then go still. I have stood in such a corridor as evening turns to night. I have leaned forward, reaching into the distance. I sit at a small desk, eating a banana and drinking lukewarm water. It seems no one knows I live here. Because I do not speak, I begin to forget how. Because I water the plants and live quietly, I am used without notice. This building has many rooms, many windows from the first floor to the tenth. I must leave here tomorrow. And I will not return.