Invisible Women

Women & Desire 2

The women down the hall are lovers. We don’t judge, but they are often loud in their affection, and they are new ones. We do not like it when their love infests our sleep, when we are roused by ghastly moans. We are so easily frightened, and by the time we distinguish pleasure from despair, we are unable to fall asleep again from too rapidly our thudding hearts. We are workers. We can’t spend our nights restless lest we become as inefficient with our time as those women down the hall.

Those women down the hall only moved in weeks ago, and already, they disrupt us all. We are not unkind here. We have tolerated many inconsiderate tenants, and we have reasoned our way with them, but those women down the hall, they don’t care about us. Those women, they are a nuisance. They arrive late in the night and their laughter festers our beds like fleas. Their joy is passionate, and their happiness is without wane.

We do not know what to do about these women down the hall. We have altered their room to be alternately frigid and searing, but they easily combatted this by removing their clothes and creating friction with their skins. We have released opossum into their room, but they roasted the flesh for sustenance, the hide for hide, the tail for strap. We are quickly resorting to more drastic measures that we are ashamed to admit, so we do not admit to them, but every night, their love slaps us awake and we are tired. We are tired beyond morality.