Lying in

The house next door to ours,
where the old man often turned
his telly up so loud my dad
would holler at my mum until
she banged the walls or started
shouting too or began to cry, was
exactly the same as ours except
laid out entirely backwards - in the hall
where the staircase should have been
was instead the half-shut door
to an anti-living room where
the curtains were tightly drawn
and the telly wasn't even on, all
quiet for the old man lying down.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet