Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale - Chapter 9 lyrics

My room, then there has to be some
Space, finally, that I claim as mine
 even in this time i'm waiting, in my room
Which right now is a waiting room when
I go to bed it's
A bedroom the curtains are still
Wavering in the small
Wind, the sun outside is still shining
Though not in through the window
Directly it has moved west i am
Trying not to tell stories
Or at any rate not this one

Someone has lived in this room
Before me someone like me
Or I prefer to believe so
I discovered it three days after
I was moved here i had a lot of time to pass
I decided to explore the room
Not hastily, as one would explore a
Hotel room, expecting no surprise


Opening and shutting the desk
Drawers, the cupboard doors
Unwrapping the tiny
Individually wrapped bar of soap
Prodding the pillows will
I ever be in a hotel room again?
How I wasted them, those rooms
That freedom from being seen rented license
In the afternoons, when Luke was still
In flight from his wife
When I was still imaginary for him before
We were married and I solidified
I would always get there first, check in it
Wasn't that many times
But it seems now like
A decade, an era I can remember what I wore
Each blouse, each scarf i would
Pace, waiting for him, turn the
Television on and then off, dab
Behind my ears with perfume
Opium it was it was in a Chinese bottle
Red and gold
I was nervous how was I to know he loved
Me? It might be just an affair why did
We ever say just? Though at that time men and
Women tried each other on
Casually, like suit's
Rejecting whatever did not fit
The knock would come at the door I'd open
With relief, desire he was so momentary
So condensed and yet there seemed
No end to him we would lie in those
Afternoon beds, afterwards, hands
On each other, talking it over possible
Impossible what could be done? We
Thought we had such
Problems how were we to know we were happy?
But now it's the rooms themselves
I miss as well
Even the dreadful paintings that
Hung on the walls
Landscapes with fall foliage or snow
Melting in hardwoods, or women
In period costume, with china doll faces
And bustles and parasols, or sad-eyed
Clowns, or bowls of fruit, stiff and
Chalky looking the fresh towels
Ready for spoilage
The wastebaskets gaping their
Invitations, beckoning in the careless junk
Careless i was careless, in those rooms
I could lift the telephone and food
Would appear on a tray, food
I had chosen food that was
Bad for me, no doubt, and drink too
There were Bibles in the dresser drawers
Put there by some charitable society
Though probably no one read them very
Much there were postcards, too
With pictures of the hotel on them
And you could write on the postcards and send
Them to anyone you wanted it seems
Like such an impossible thing
Now like something you'd make up
So i explored this room, not hastily
Then, like a hotel room
Wasting it i didn't want to
Do it all at once, I wanted to make
It last i divided the room into sections
In my head I allowed myself
One section a day this
One section I would examine
With the greatest minuteness:
The unevenness of the plaster
Under the wallpaper
The scratches in the paint
Of the baseboard and the windowsill, under
The top coat of paint, the stains
On the mattress
For I went so far as to lift the blankets and
Sheets from the bed, fold them back
A little at a time
So they could be replaced
Quickly if anyone came
The stains on the mattress like dried
Flower petals not recent old
Love there's no other kind of
Love in this room now
When I saw that, the evidence left by two
People, of love or something like it
Desire at least, at least touch, between two
People now perhaps old or dead
I covered the bed again
And lay down on it i looked up at the
Blind plaster eye in the ceiling i wanted
To feel Luke lying beside me i have them
These attacks of the past, like faintness
A wave sweeping over my head sometimes
It can hardly be borne
What is to be done, what is to be done
I thought there is nothing to be
Done they also serve who only
Stand and wait or lie down and wait i
Know why the glass in the window is
Shatterproof, and why they took
Down the chandelier i
Wanted to feel Luke lying beside me
But there wasn't room
I saved the cupboard until the
Third day i looked
Carefully over the door first
Inside and out
Then the walls with their brass
Hooks how could they have overlooked the
Hooks? Why didn't they remove
Them? Too close to the floor?
But still, a stocking, that's all you'd
Need and the rod with the plastic hangers
My dresses hanging on them, the red woollen
Cape for cold weather, the shawl i knelt to
Examine the floor, and there it
Was, in tiny writing, quite fresh
It seemed, scratched with a pin
Or maybe just a fingernail
In the corner where the darkest shadow
Fell: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum
I didn't know what it meant
Or even what language
It was in i thought it might be Latin
But I didn't know any Latin
Still, it was a message, and
It was in writing, forbidden by that
Very fact, and it hadn't yet
Been discovered except by me
For whom it was intended it was
Intended for whoever came next
It please, s me to ponder
This message it please, s me to think I'm
Communing with her, this unknown woman for
She is unknown or if known
She has never been
Mentioned to me it please, s me to know
That her taboo message made it through
To at least one other person, washed it'self
Up on the wall of my cupboard
Was opened and read by me sometimes
I repeat the words to myself they give
Me a small joy when I imagine
The woman who wrote them, I think
Of her as about my age
Maybe a little younger i turn her
Into Moira, Moira as she was
When she was in college
In the room next to mine:
Quirky, jaunty, athletic, with
A bicycle once, and a
Knapsack for hiking freckles
I think irreverent, resourceful
I wonder who she was or is
And what's become of her
I tried that out on Rita
The day I found the message
Who was the woman who stayed
In that room? I said
Before me? If I'd asked it
Differently, if I'd said
Was there a woman who stayed in that room
Before me? I might not have got anywhere
Which one? she said she sounded
Grudging, suspicious, but then
She almost always sounds like that
When she speaks to me
So there have been more than one
Some haven't stayed their full term
Of posting, their full two years
Some have been sent away
For one reason or another or
Maybe not sent gone?
The lively one i was guessing
The one with freckles
You know her? Rita asked
More suspicious than ever i knew her before
I lied i heard she was here
Rita accepted this she knows there
Must be a grapevine, an underground of sorts
She didn't work out, she said
In what way? I asked
Trying to sound as neutral as possible
But Rita clamped her lips together i
Am like a child here, there are some
Things I must not be told what
You don't know won't hurt you
Was all she would say