21 FIRST AVENUE

21 First Avenue

Once I lived in the dust of cockroaches
The pipes clanked with hammers at night
The bedroom was small and the kitchen tight
And the view down the airshaft was atrocious

This is where my first love spun its thread
And wove two lives within its womb
Down its single hall you and I did loom
Rocking babies, back and forth we’d tread

By the window in the living room a chair
With a view of tenements on First Avenue
And in the corner the bed where we first knew
The thrill and burden of the life we bared

It was in another room and a different bed
That we uncovered one another and fled