Monday, 13 February 2017

1

I don't like my neighbor. He is older but not stooped, his back as tall and straight as a rod. White-haired but not elderly. He has a comfortable layer of fat- from the road you can see him sitting in his lounge room chair, slowly drinking a can of beer in an otherwise-empty room. He stays up all night pottering in his overgrown garden shed; the banging of the shed door wakes me up routinely just after the clock hits midnight. I hear the familiar clip of his feet trot neatly to his back porch, then the creak of his screen door pulling open, then the latch click as the door swings shut. I don't like him because he seems more active than me and he shouldn't be.