rust

_

There is a rotting smell coming from 
the bedroom—the flowers on the 
fire escape are losing their battle.

It is almost like rust, the bedbug kind, 

the things-under-your-skin kind, the 

kind that destroys your grandpa’s
1955 Thunderbird when he leaves 
it in the Jersey shore garage over
the summer because he has left for 
Florida and your father is secretly
angry because the car was promised
to him in the will, and he complains 
about it to his son (?), who tells him
that they call dibs after he dies, and 
then he gets angry, and says why do
you talk about what you will do when

I die, and then the room begins to smell 
a lot like it would if that really happened. 

The radiator is off but it is too hot inside, 
and the sheets and the curtains are slowly
molding a mad red, viscera like the corned
beef you eat at the diner when you want
to run far far away and you do, blocking
the school across the street and the woman
who looks like when gods are disguised as
beggars in old myths watering flowers on 
her balcony, muffling the sound of church
bells from a block over and the yelling from
the people at the second church right next to 
you, and you lay back on the pillows and 
turn off your phone and laugh at the bluejay
picking at the flowers and maybe even spot 
a tinge of brown-red in your fingernails too.