Fibre Optic Tree

By Anita DeMahy

Dad’s ninth storey apartment rests in a Hackney project complex among the stars

One single compartmentalized unit of drugged and drunken bachelorhood

Christmas glowers at curious knick knacks glistening buoyantly from corners of the flat, as if showing homage to the fibreoptic tree standing in the center of the studio space

I look around my ‘room’

Which has been outlined by a sheet, slung over one of those car wire harness things, then slung from the pipes that line the ceilings

He tried

A menacing display of Santa Claus and his reindeer, borrowed from my nan’s house, blinks loudly beneath the letters

‘M RRY CHRISTM S’