LOOKING AT BEDROOMS

for AA

When I was very small,
small enough to have a teddy,
a teddy made by my uncle,
my uncle who went to prison,
I remember the white prison bars 
of my cot, and beyond them 
the orange billowing curtains 
in a very small room
in a very small chalet
in a very small seaside town.

When I was up and walking,
say I was three or four, maybe older, 
I was a very late walker,
I remember I slept in a room
between a bathroom and attic stair
on a bottom bunk beneath my sister,
and the room was so small
that all I remember
was the bathroom was avocado.

When we moved house,
when I was five or six or seven,
I got my own room.
It was a small room
that housed tank engines
and robots and Millenium Falcons.
One day we took the chimney out
and made it a square foot bigger.
Then I moved out.

My bedrooms at university
grew progressively bigger
until I inhabited an entire extension
with its own sink and coffee machine
and a wide blue carpet.

The curve continued 
from doubles to king sized beds,
first, second and third floor attics,
to skylights that stare out over the rooftops
and let the breezes in over the pillows,
cooling the red linen
and all the time getting larger
until it will become a loft conversion apartment.

But when I am older I expect
to open a white door onto a single bed
under a re-inforced glass window.
I expect I'll be helped
the three short shuffled steps
over the beige berber to the bar
that the nurse will lower
before tipping me in.
In the night, I expect I will wake
and feel the high walls closing in
and see the moon cast it's ocean shadows.

*The image is not a bedroom I have ever lived in, but it did inspire the poem. Thanks to Amy Audebert for allowing its use.