Top floor apartments shelter stair noises, no longer content belonging to levels, they die where brick and stucco meet the morning fog.
But the hollow footsteps compete for space within the soundscape, challenging my neighbors, arguing in Spanish, deaf translations to my English trained brain, it’s the tone I recognize and door slams and whimpering, establishing human “love” as the true victor.
‘Ha,’ I think. ‘Fools. Why invest in such tragedies?’
From my window I watch a squirrel scamper along the roof of a neighboring apartment complex. The animal pauses before a broken shingle, rips a splinter from its jagged edge, carries it away in their mouth.
I imagine they’ll use it for their nest.
We know this hole exists.
Those living in the building won’t be aware of its presence until moisture soaks the wood and dibbles hello, to the renter below.
I like that we share this secret about crippled shelter.
It’s a power complex to offset my loneliness.
Weeks ago, I met a standalone happiness.
A smile which qualifies my other secrets for execution, to make space for something new.
Content to feel my heart-beat fluctuate when my cell phone vibrates with a notification.
‘Maybe it’s them!’ Is the first thought.
I allow the phone to rest a few seconds, check it and sigh in acceptance, another email about nothing.
I’ll spend the next few moments rationalizing why I feel such joy from rejection.
Can’t feel happiness without sadness.
Can’t miss a touch if I had never felt it.
Can’t appreciate the blah, blah, blah.
The squirrel returns. Well. I don’t know if it’s the same one, but for the sake of my sanity, I’ll pretend they’re returning to me.
Plastic mask taunted water-marks, brandishing its translucent features under rain-fall, bending where a neck would go and peering up to count each raindrop as they struck and slid and blended in with puddles and pools.
“A puddle counts as one name.” Plastic mask announced their decision much to the water’s dismay, as it wanted to be considered an individual.
Clay mask had worked their masters colors to resemble a face, with nostrils staring like Nietzsche’s abyss, baby blue irises which never stared beyond the room, or blinked at the sun.
Obulus payments accredited to closed minds sterilized Heaven’s gate, enough for the light to guide a soul to the Casino.
An abandoned spider web, attached to a suburban chimney cap, pilfers its attraction to lonely debris, grabs pollen rolling over the shingles and hoists it like a flag.
Clouds encase the backdrop, challenge the pollen and webbing to define “pure white.”
Ghosts are translucent, forgotten and haunt places for attention.
Bleached air is toxic to breathe.
The chimney’s owners are painting their walls eggshell, in order to appease their guru, who instructed them to welcome cleanliness into their lives.
Underneath the house’s foundation, soil protozoa purify Earth for exploitation.
Above ground, a Styrofoam cup, stained with cherry Kool-Aid around its rim, gathers an eclipse and darkens red blotches decorating the cup’s basin.
A door opens and pushes air which knocks the cup off the desk.
“I don’t remember drinking something red.” She says.
“I remember my hog’s teeth, though, they were white as this…
