An L-Shaped Room
Elizabeth Gibson
They say my room will be L-shaped next year,
spacious, and I wonder: will it be big enough
for you to drop by, the way you do, or the way
you did and I wish you would again? They say
the roof is slanted, with the bed tucked below
and that feels cosy, doesn’t it? Imagine us all
snuggled down there, like in a barn. Little fat
chickens, both, warm and feathered and soft.
They say there is a small yard outside that our
– no, my – window looks out over, instead of
the lawn again with everyone else looking in.
That will be nice, won’t it? We can breathe a
bit. I know on the other side of the house there
are trees and it is shady and cool and grey and
not green. Imagine hanging out over the sill,
watching the world, twilight in loose wet hair.
Our room is at the end of the corridor, and I do
like that people won’t be trekking past us all
day and night. We are the last stop, journey’s
end. I can see me sneaking a note in your post
box after dinner, you flitting up in your hoodie
and pyjamas, smiling as I take your hands and
pull you over the threshold, before we fall onto
our skinny bed in our spacious L-shaped room.
Elizabeth Gibson was a winner at the 2017 Northern Writers’ Awards. Her work has appeared in Antiphon, Cake, The Cardiff Review, The Compass, Creative Review, Far Off Places, Gigantic Sequins, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Litro and The Poetry Shed, and she was featured in Introduction X: The Poetry Business Book of New Poets. Elizabeth came second in the Poetry Society’s 2016 Timothy Corsellis Prize and was shortlisted for the Poetry Business’s 2018 New Poets Prize. She edits Foxglove Journal and the Word Life section of Now Then Manchester, tweets @Grizonne and blogs at http://elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.co.uk