There was no movement
There was no movement in any of these chambers, it is you that must move, before you are flattened into the only spaces you slide in to occupy, in thresholds, eddies. In your stillness you are painted into the compositions, you linger in mirrors and before glass. You allow reflections to move through the rooms for you, translating from one space to the next through merely chance orientations and angles of incidence. You are incapable of claiming a place, putting your shoes outside each chamber door penetrating further than the late afternoon sun through the open front door. You walk until the sea is forgotten, it has been so consistently present in streams that run back downhill through alleys, and yet you cannot pass through the door. A third mirror, in the ajar mirrored door of the medicine cabinet is touched by pale afternoon light that plays off of surrounding buildings and drifts into a northern window piece by piece. It tinkles slowly onto the folds of an unmade bed, the pillow is fluffed and its case is smoothed so that the open end is flat and sealed. Soft shadows float over the rumpled sheet and the room is empty save for the bed. Your traipsing gaze draws away from this sacred sunlight, an accidental occurence, every afternoon forever, and back through the dim and straight passageway. Stains rise high onto the walls and out into the open porch, dusty traces from soft dirt and fur drifts that have blown away. Stains and flakes remain preserved as nostalgia, or a deterrent. These ruinous apartments await the tide to rise up and cleanse them, or sweep them away entirely, to deposit them on ahead, or back through some nights on a street closer to the sea.