(Visit to Robert)
Entering the livingroom. An Edinburgh terraced flat like my grandmother's groundfloor livingroom.
And I click on the TV.
Upstairs the parents are asleep. All is hushed. I do not turn on the lights.
The sexual coloured light of TV in the mournful room. I sit on the edge of the sofa bed. Laconically watching TV.
I realise with shock that under the duvet on the sofabed someone is lying. I see sticking out, wrinkled bedsocks and tousled hair.
The face is revealed. I see it is my friend Robert, very weary and confused. It is he I have come to see.
But his flatmates are awoken upstairs. And up the dark and secret stairs.
Upstairs under a bright bulb my mother had awoken sternly. And my sisters in a bad mood rustle plastic bags.
When Robert wakes after a Friday night out I plead with him: "But haven't you got a couch where I can sleep?" I'll bed down, with my coat, on any long, grimy couch.
I just want to sleep before dawn.
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