Crow Pose
To be a bird lady and wander around town | The Muse Letter No. 161
Wading in waist-high water today, trying to connect the threads, weaving it into a cohesive narrative but mostly looking at the chandeliers that hang heavy from the ceiling. One of the guys that I’m seeing lives in a housing association. Every week he has to bid on a flat that comes up, he explains to me as we’re lying in bed, tapping on his phone: “This is how you build up credit and stay on the waiting list”. I’m finding it hard to comprehend what he says, as he leaves gaps in his explanation. He told me on our first date that he lives in a housing association but it is only now that I am starting to piece it together, that he must have been homeless at some point. That when we hiked up Calton Hill the day before and I said: You’ve been through a rough couple of years, huh? I had no idea of the extent of that statement.
The word housing association did not mean anything to me when he mentioned it, as a foreigner unaware of the social housing …