Author: sh.itty

It screams with the voice of a dying plane,
blowing lukewarm air that smells of ozone
and the panic of a thousand wet palms.

I hold my fingers to the nozzle,
watching a single bead of water
shiver and vanish into the void.

It is a loud, electric prayer
for skin that never quite dries,
leaving me damp and humming
like a fluorescent light in a dead mall.

The grease trap is a heavy, black lung
breathing the scent of a thousand fried mistakes.
It holds the sludge of old lard
and the glitter of a dropped wedding ring.

A colony of pale worms
dances in the iridescent film,
moving with the grace of a dying ballet
under a flickering fluorescent tube.

I stare into the oil
and see my own face,
blurred and yellow,
like a photograph left in the rain.

The foam has swollen with November rain,
a heavy, grey sponge smelling of wet dog
and the ghosts of a thousand bad decisions.
A single copper coin is fused to the fabric,
green as a bruised plum.

A cigarette butt is buried in the seam,
a small, white bone in a velvet grave.
The sky is the color of wet concrete,
and a pigeon lands on the armrest
with an eye like a rusted bead.

I sink for a moment into the cold,
tasting the metallic tang of the wind.
It feels like a hug from a dead relative
who only ever lied about their salary.

The carton bloats like a drowned lung,
shivering in the back of the fridge
beside a jar of pickled eggs and a dead lime.

It smells of a wet basement in 1994,
a thick, sour cloud that tastes of iron
and the way you looked when you left.

I pour it out, and it lands in the sink
like a heavy, white curd,
a slow-motion landslide of forgotten calcium.

The dryer spins a single red sock
into a frantic, nylon whirlpool.
It smells of industrial lemon
and a divorce that took too long.

I lean my forehead against the glass,
feeling the vibration of a thousand
lost buttons and linty dreams,
hoping the cycle ends in silence.

The dryer hums a hymn for the lost,
swallowing one red sock
and the copper taste of a winter cough.
The air is thick with the ghost of lavender
and the smell of a wet dog in a raincoat.

A stranger peels a hard-boiled egg
over a mountain of damp towels,
his knuckles white as bleached linen.
He has the patience of a dead fish
while the machine shakes like a shivering addict.

I found a button from a coat I never owned,
black as a blind eye,
nestled in the grey fur of the lint trap.

The bristles are splayed like a panic attack,
caked in a lime-scale crust
from a faucet that screams in the night.

It lives in a ceramic cup
beside a half-eaten peach
and a pill for the shaking.

A plastic monument to a mouth
that forgot how to taste the salt.

I taped my heart to the radiator
with a strip of grey, industrial grit.
It held for a week, smelling of adhesive and wet dog,
until the heat turned it into a gummy, black syrup.

The landlord came by to check the leaks
and found a dead moth glued to the baseboard,
frozen in a scream of silver foil and dust.
He looked at me with eyes like two boiled potatoes.

I told him it was a temporary installation.
He just sighed, smelling of cheap menthols,
as my heart slid slowly down the wallpaper
like a slice of raw ham in a July rain.

The sheets were the color of old mustard and regret,
stained by a decade of midnight panics and bad tea.
I lay there watching a spider build a cathedral
between the bedpost and a stack of unpaid bills.

The air tasted of damp wool and a neighbor's frying fish,
a thick, salty blanket that smoothed over the silence.
I tried to remember your name, but it slipped
like a wet soap bar in a cold shower.

I laughed once, a dry sound like a closing coffin,
and watched a single fly drown in a puddle of spilled beer,
its wings vibrating with a tiny, frantic elegance.

I kissed you behind the pharmacy dumpster
while the moon hung up there like a broken molar.
Your coat smelled of rain, frying oil, and old receipts.
Mine smelled like panic and petrol station soap.
We had five euros, one cigarette, and a peach
soft as a bruise in the bottom of your bag.

Somewhere a bus exhaled at nobody.
A man in a suit stepped over a puddle of vomit
like it was a small national border.
You laughed with that cracked-bell laugh of yours
and bit the fruit until juice ran down your wrist
like the saddest luxury in Europe.

Later I rinsed my mouth in a bar toilet
and still tasted you, metal, sugar, and public failure.