Someone who has never lived in a flat, is stood on the pavement in front of one, surrounded by other flats, some taller and larger than the others. Alienated, they ask themselves: what hides behind these tall, brick walls? Who—or what—lives behind these windows which at night flicker with a telly’s blue light?

With so many people living in just one of these buildings, it seems from the start impossible to get to know them. But if you’re patient enough, you might spot them every once in a while, as they open their sliding doors and step onto their balconies. As they lean over them, as though having come up for breath, before stepping back into their dark interiors. No matter how the light hits the windows, they look dark and deep, like the surface of an ocean.

Then, our visitor notices something. Between two balconies, near the top floor, plant cuttings are exchanged, and the dirt falls off the roots, down onto the pavement. And the visitor thinks of how much of the world is still undiscovered, the countless species still unknown in the ocean’s depths and how we will probably forever continue to find new ones in the humid, dense jungles of the rainforest. Lastly, they think of all of the places they’ve never been.

As our visitor rubs their hands in the fallen dirt, the flat before them is slowly being consumed by several varieties of ivy, in which people are hidden, waiting to be found.

Text ©Jared Meijer