a summer spent alone in 1310

Indee said they feel the sadness within the brown walls and makeshift bed sheet partitions of this halfway home and they had to go.  I stay alone letting the cockroaches roam freely in the kitchen while I explore the unimportance of “I,” staying stagnant like a small glass containing what passes through me.

Understand the consequences of exchanging energy.

The cats come and go through the windows. They press their faces against my shirtsleeves, purring in the morning and drawing my blood by dusk. “We all take what we need,” says the foam ceiling tiles pushing their way down to the kitchen table, offering our appliances to the sky.

A gold heart is painted on the empty bedroom wall. Scribbled inside is, “I love you." "Mostly." "Maybe." "I love you sometimes.” A black marker X covers the uncertainty and I’m still not quite sure what it means, a comedy or tragedy. The ones who came before me remain a mystery. Those who follow, they will not know what we have made and destroyed here.

I am always looking behind my back like a paranoid vagrant, wondering when someone will wander quietly inside. Each room is a long hallway. This house is an ongoing rumor.

The adhesive connecting the bathtub to the beige tile is loosening, revealing the dirt beneath our dirty feet. This house is tired of balancing on the stilts built to keep us afloat, slowly sinking unsuspectingly. The floorboards are as disconnected as those who tread them. The decay has not been discussed. Our mouths are heavy with pride. We are sinking and we find it trendy to wear our bright colored life jackets daily. We are not sustainable and why should we be?

Inside the refrigerator, the shelves are weighted with the water that seeps out onto the muddy floor. The small black spiders and young cockroaches take comfort in the moist cold of the insulation, crawling over molding food like hikers conquering mountains. The kitchen floods. We all flood, indulging. An orange extension cord sits idly in a brown puddle. We crave movement. A frozen fish sits in the freezer with its one eye always looking out and its mouth wanting one last say in this world. I am a frozen fish waiting. 

The pink salamanders keep to themselves, running along the corners and cracks of the baseboards like guilty bandits. The ants and maggots migrate along the sink each morning. Some of us have licked the honey from the table and we carry our sticky shame inside our pockets. We’ve all turned paranoid. I press my breast against the front room window, watching the neighbors surely watching me, embarrassed in my lack of movement. Insects crawl out from the shells of the insects who came before them. This house is delirious, clogged with soul searchers guided by false prophets and romance and ego.  The windows stay open, but the metal bars stay fixed.