All of my house plants make me angry, they evoke an inescapable domesticity.
Every day, I wind the antique analog clock that sits lopsided above the pantry.
By tomorrow morning at seven, it will be two minutes off.
Its defiance reinstills the nihilism purged from me after a long day’s work.
The dull smell of tangerine wafts from under my bed; they were in season about a month or so ago.
My stack of photo albums from foreign places was adopted as coasters on the coffee table.
I miss that picture of you, the one buried in the unlabeled box in the guest room.
On that trip, we took up the river without knowing if we had the money to come back down.
It's thirty-eight degrees outside, I wrap my legs in your grandma’s blanket from her house on West St.
The sun made me dream of winter when I didn’t have to make excuses to stay inside.
My records sing a soft sound of Mandolin around the corduroy room.
I slide my rent money under the empty cup of tea on the dining room table, counting bills in inconsistent denominations.
My rusty guitar strings stain my fingers a rusted tinge of orange. All my shirts are covered in the hue of fingerprints.
I sing ballads until my thumb blisters, neglecting my other hobbies.
My storm window opens exactly four inches, enough to smoke in my room.
It feels inconsistent to pretend I don’t care.
The cats outside eat the same sprouted grass peaking through the cracked asphalt.
The man who lives in cardboard sat with an empty cup in front of his bare feet.
I stare back at my reflection in the bottom of my scotch glass and roll my eyes at my dull, glazed expression.
I tossed my cloth bag at the foot of my bed, where it lay like your delicate lace removed from your form.
Clothes were thrown around the room, tracks of where we once made love
When you asked me if my songs were about you, I lied.
They were about a girl I’d not met yet, from a town I’d never been to.
She hates the city and says we are over-taxed.
Polluted and shadowy basements to reside month after month, to break even.
I am a blind boy, and you can’t be blamed.
It’s as good as it gets.
“Ivan Ilych’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”
―Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich