Author: sh.itty

There was a dead sparrow in the freezer
between a bag of dill and two pork chops,
small as a crumpled glove,
its beak full of permanent opinion.
The light came on like a liar entering church.
I stood there barefoot, holding mustard.

From the downstairs flat came opera and coughing.
My sink held three forks and a peach pit.
I thought of you in your red underwear,
smoking by the window like rent was a religion.
Even the sparrow looked better preserved than us.

At the bus stop someone had hung pork rinds
on a broken necklace wire,
little gold moons for the neck of a saint
who drank mouthwash behind the pharmacy.
Rain kept licking the timetable to transparency.
My shoe filled slowly with Finland.

A woman in a fur coat carried a leaking carp
inside a supermarket bag that said THANK YOU.
It tapped her knee all the way across the street
like a small, wet uncle asking for bail.
I wanted to kiss you then,
but my breath tasted like vending-machine coffee and pennies.

When the bus arrived it knelt in gray exhaust,
and the necklace swung once like it had remembered a ballroom.

On the laundromat windowsill
someone left a tulip in an ashtray,
red as a tongue after cheap wine.
The petals were taking nicotine personally.
A bra revolved in the dryer
like a white flag nobody respected.

An old man folded his socks with priestly care
while the change machine coughed out one Canadian coin.
I thought of calling you, but my phone
smelled faintly of garlic and pocket heat.
When the tulip dropped a petal into the ash,
it looked exactly like rent coming due.

The office fridge held a single oyster
in a paper coffee cup labeled KEVIN.
It smelled like low tide in a photocopier,
like somebody had tried to expense loneliness.
Beside it, a yogurt swelled politely,
wearing green fur like a tiny winter coat.

At lunch I ate crackers over the sink
and watched the oyster grin in its gray spit.
Some things stay closed out of dignity,
some because opening them would cost money.

The kebab shop closed at midnight,
but the rotisserie kept turning in the dark
like a small, greasy planet nobody could save.
A tomato slice clung to the sidewalk
with the wet patience of a failed marriage.

Someone had drawn a halo on the dumpster lid.
Under it, a torn latex glove fluttered,
five exhausted fingers blessing the wind.
I stood there smelling onion, rain, and old fryer oil,
and felt, for one stupid second, almost forgiven.

In the motel bathroom, a teaspoon lies bent
beside a bar of soap wearing someone else's pubic hair.
The mirror has that yellow cough to it,
and my face comes back looking pawned.
A peach bruises slowly on the sink,
soft as an apology nobody signed.
I think of your mouth, all its bankrupt weather,
and how love always wanted exact change.

Outside, the ice machine groans like a widower.
I carry a bucket down the corridor in my underwear,
feeling almost royal, almost rabid.
The cubes shine like chipped teeth in church light.
By morning they will be water again,
which is the saddest trick anything beautiful knows.

At the bus stop, a torn coupon for pork chops
keeps sticking to my shoe like a needy tongue.
Rain has turned the ink to a blue bruise,
and the smiling pig now looks mildly employed.

A man beside me carries lilies in a bucket
that once held pickled herring.
Everything tonight has a second career,
even the moon, hanging over Lidl
like a dented pan nobody admits to licking.
I miss you most in the smell of wet receipts.

A glass of water on the nightstand,
holding a set of teeth like a pale, sunken ship.
They float in a slow, circular drift,
catching the blue light of a nearby pharmacy sign.

A smear of cherry lipstick on the rim,
tasting of cheap wine and a decade of lies.
They bob there, mindless and white,
dreaming of a steak they will never chew.

It is the most honest thing in the room,
waiting for the morning
to be shoved back into a mouth of gums
and a lingering scent of mothballs.

A gold-plated ring of cheap plastic
wedged between a flattened Marlboro
and a piece of grey, salted gum.
It catches a sliver of neon light
like a holy relic in a gutter.

The rain peels the glitter away,
leaving a jagged, yellow tooth
that tastes of iron and diesel.
I want to wear it to the funeral,
just to see who notices the shine.

The blades are coated in a grey, felted fur,
a thick skin of dead cells and city soot.
It rattles like a skeleton in a washing machine,
pushing the scent of hot copper into my eyes.

I remember you in that yellow dress,
the fan blowing your hair into a frantic web.
Now it just shudders in the corner of the room,
whirring a hymn for things that refuse to stop shaking.

A fly landed on the grill and stayed,
frozen in a state of electric shock,
looking like a tiny, charred prayer
offered to a god of lukewarm air.