In an ever changing and increasingly depressing internet landscape we, the collective users, have learned to restrain our expectations. Nothing is ever free. Every fresh digital invention so beautifully innocent and new is born with a two option future: either sellout and retreat behind a paywall or succumb to the slow death of increasingly embarrassing and debilitating adverts. And yet, within this vast ever darkening digital ocean one human island remains: Craigslist. Blue text turns purple. If you need something you’ve got something, you wanna get scammed? Okay. Fine. Craigslist. If you’re looking for sex, love, a set of drawers, an apartment, a $400 leather hippopotamus, toes to suck on, bed risers that look like solo cups, a fold out desk with a photo of many large barbie doll heads glued on, photos of all kinds of expensive furniture laid out on the green grass, mirrors, shelves in the shape of the moon, a job at a company that sells gongs on the internet, a bedframe, a pet, someone to tell your dreams to at night, an argument, a dubious art modelling gig, hot literature, and infinite more, Craigslist has got you. Humanity sees ourselves reflected in the wants we post and browse on Craigslist. There is an equity in the Craigslist power balance; a want or a need meets a have. Overall, this equality is evenly represented across all sections, however, in one particular section, it falls short. Craigslist apartments is a power struggle wrapped in desperation.

Somewhere along the line an echo chamber was introduced into apartment listings. The owning party knows the power they hold, they have an apartment for the best candidate and they have a city full of potential people, one of them is bound to have good credit, a good job, no dog, no kids (though they can’t say it), is preferably white (though of course they can’t say it) and presents themselves real clean. Despite this, brokers and landlords cloak their ads in the strangest air of desperation. The brokers are tired of prospective tenants, they are tired of repeating the same things, and they are tired because they know these apartments are shit. The apartments are shit. The apartments are shit and they are $3400 a month because you’re trying to live in Fort Greene, who do you think you are? Closet space? Full bedroom? Amenities? Your amenity is the city and your backyard is the park, you’re lucky to live here, fuck you.

This problem is easily highlighted by one listing’s stipulated “$50 Rental application fee”. I have become obsessed with the apartment with the $50 Rental application fee. It’s called “$3,400 / 1br – 875ft2 – 1br Garden apt. (Fort Greene Brooklyn)”. It is “Attention to detail in our quiet 1 bedroom floor through garden apartment on what Time Out New York called the best block in New York City.” This apartment has been on Craigslist for 23 days. This is long for the New York apartment rental market and I can only assume that my suspicions are correct. It’s not the illegal rental application fee, what’s $50 to a person who can afford a $3400 a month apartment? It’s the fact that, when you leave the beautiful wood floor of the kitchen you walk into a deep red carpeted living room. Apartment carpet holds distinct imprints. The Fort Greene apartment description does not talk about the red carpet, what could’ve they said? “We’ve rolled out the red carpet for you on this one!” “Feel like a star every day walking barefoot on the crushed red carpet of your new home!” Instead they say “Beautiful Fort Greene Park at end of block hosts weekend green market.” and ask for a $50 rental fee.

I have a habit where I attempt to dream myself into every beautiful New York apartment available on Craigslist that I can’t afford. This is a long form activity and if I do it correctly can take up at least a good half of a workday if it’s slow and no one interrupts me. When walking thru worlds that are at once real but digital in the moment it is integral to keep a sense of pragmatism. When living in a space you will encounter all sorts of moods. Living in a space is not all the first month of falling in love with a new person. An apartment is going to be full of you. You will move and your habits will not change. There are bits of you that you will not want to admit to yourself. And yet, it doesn’t matter if you admit them or not, you are still you. That apartment will contain the all of you and you will explode the whole matter of you on the walls without decorum. We are modern humans; this is how we live. Therefore, even when dreaming and walking thru the real imaginary it’s important to be aware of layout, color, sunlight, aptitude for basic sadness, etc.

I make a point to imagine myself crying in every apartment on Craigslist, that real grief bellows type. A full on, the neighbors can hear me, type heave, I’ll not make eye contact with anyone in the building for at least a month after. Is this apartment gonna be an apartment I feel comfortable dissolving in? If the walls are very white, and the door is too near the bedroom, or the sun doesn’t come in enough or I’m going to be sobbing on the couch while staring into the kitchen, this is a no. Practicality above all things.

Again I cannot afford these apartments. These are merely digital worlds and I’m only imagining cracking my toes within them. That being said it’s important to imagine that I wake one morning intensely hungover. Where’s the bathroom in relation to the bed? What are the color of the walls? Will the street outside be full of cars or dogs or children or machinery? These are the things you’ll notice when the cramps come, when the need arrives. Is that a bathroom floor that you’d like to lay on? Get acquainted. Settle your body into your worst moments. Look around the rooms and imagine you don’t see the sun for a week. You could lose a job in this place, a limb, a lover. Any room is a beautiful room when you’ve got light times. Cook curry for the cockroaches you’re in love! Craigslist brokers aren’t gonna write you a description including the intricacies of your gradual demise in your slow plod to the death, you’ve got to supply that. An advertisement is just an advertisement no matter how many times SEXY is written in all caps. I love when they write SEXY in all caps.

Sometimes the broker gets angry. When the broker gets angry they revert to using all caps and you can tell it’s because they are tired of people asking the same question. On a particularly ridiculous and strange apartment the broker felt the need to begin the listing with, “OLD PHOTOS & NO THIS IS NOT A RAILROAD STYLE APARTMENT” and later reiterated, “Oversized kitchen has been completely renovated, along with new appliances PHOTOS ARE OLD, come and see for yourself.” In this particular apartment that was, “very close to the home depot (bonus!)”, there were 2 bedrooms listed but then later the broker walks it back and says it’s actually 1.5 beds. This apartment is great for one and a half people. The bedroom for the half person is off the kitchen next to the bathroom very far away from the bedroom for the one person and is 8ft by 7ft. In New York a bedroom must be a minimum of 80 square feet. As this bedroom is only 56ft it is considered part of a bedroom and there it is great for the .5 person you need to store in your apartment somewhere.

Occasionally the ceilings are high, the rent is cheap, the deli is two doors down, the kitchen is large and there’s no sink in the bathroom. The listing says the apartment is unique. The apartment is unique. The kitchen is big black and white tile and good to dream about. You think about never washing your hands after using the toilet. You think about never washing your face at night. You think about brushing your teeth over the kitchen sink. The living bodied broker waits expectantly, digitally behind a computer screen. The listing says it is unique. Are you unique enough for this apartment? What’s a bathroom sink? You think about a potential lover standing in the bathroom looking expectantly for a sink that isn’t there. You think about the moment the realization of the lack dawns. You think about the look they give you upon exiting the bathroom with the missing sink and their unclean hands. You think about the unspoken shared knowledge of filth between you. You stop daydreaming in the apartment and click to the next listing. There is not a lot of room for this type of uniqueness in a pandemic world.

Sometimes the broker uploads photos of an apartment that is still occupied. The listing feels less liminal more voyeuristic. Frozen in time, we are allowed to walk through the life they’ve lived and are leaving. Why do they shelve their books pages out? This is a psychotic manner of organization. Is this an aesthetic choice or is the collection merely embarrassing? The broker offers nothing in terms of explanation, in fact, this is the most terse description yet, “Entire top floor of large Brooklyn Brownstone. Walk up. Sunny eat in kitchen and living room facing south. Bedroom and extra room on north side. Extra room gets some natural light. This room has been used as an office/walk-in closet. Cats allowed, but no dogs. Heat and hot water provided. Electric and cooking gas by tenant. Available Feb. 15.” I feel my head bump into the ceiling in the kitchen. Top floor and it’s Summer and I’m sweating after the walkup, my body pooling out in a puddle on the sunny eat-in kitchen floor. The kitchen floor looks like a floor I could lie on. The bed looks sweaty to me. A fever dream of a sweat bed. Top floor brownstone heat puddling, oppressive hangover, hangdog on the floor head in the fridge type.

I’d like to meet every person who moves into the apartments I dream about. I’d like to sneak into their lives in the most feigned innocent manner and walk through the rooms they’ve created that I am unable to imagine. Where do they put their couch? Where do they fling their keys when they walk in the door? Is the proximity of the Home Depot truly a bonus? I want to prop myself up in their living rooms, drink their tea, hear them talk shit about their broker, and ask them about their Craigslist experiences. I’d like to tell them about mine. How I wake up on Craigslist mattress on Craigslist bedframe, fix my hair in Craigslist mirror, sit on Craigslist chair at Craigslist desk, choose clothes from Craigslist wardrobe. There’s so much more than just that. Cleaning stains off Craigslist couches in Craigslist apartments. Rolling up to Craigslist job on Craigslist bike. Craigslist is an end to a means, a way of cobbling together a tangible life or a way to walk through an imaginary one. Craigslist is the website with everything, tied to humanity through our own fleeting needs, built collectively with the remnants of ourselves shed in moving sales or replaced by the something new. Our own tangible island in the ever widening world wide ocean.

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Morgan Boyle is a poet from Lincoln, Nebraska currently residing with Kikko the cat in Ridgewood, Queens. Her work has been featured in Yes Magazine, Peach Mag, Anti Heroin Chic, and The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow. She has received the Brooklyn Poets Poem of the Month award two times once in March 2021 and again in January 2022. Morgan can be found on Instagram @morgan.le_fay and on twitter @morganlefay777.