Category: Daily Shit

A soggy cardboard box holds a frozen ham
and a small, handwritten note that says "Run."
The ice has melted into a grey puddle
that tastes faintly of copper and old pennies.

You left your earring in the grease-trap,
a diamond trapped in a sea of potato peelings.
I watched the janitor mop the floor
with the expression of a man who has seen God
and decided He was a fraud.

I am eating the ham with my fingers,
cold and salty, in the light of a flickering neon sign
that promises "Open" but is lying to everyone.

The drain holds a knot of wet hair
and a gold earring from a wedding in June.
It smells of bleach and yesterday's toothpaste,
a small, damp museum of everything I lost.

I tried to fish it out with a bent coat hanger,
stabbing at the sludge like a desperate surgeon.
The water swirled grey and thick,
carrying away a flake of skin and a dead fly.

I think of you in that silk dress,
all shivering and expensive,
while I stand here in my underwear,
holding my breath against the scent of sulfur.

A fried egg clung to the blue vinyl seat,
a yellow eye staring at the rainy street.
It had the patience of a forgotten debt,
warm and smelling of wet cigarette.

The driver cursed in a language of rust,
the windows coated in a fine, grey dust.
I sat beside it, my coat smelling of gin,
tracing the grease-map where the shift began.

When I stood to leave, the yolk gave way,
a golden smear for the rest of the day.
It looked like a sunrise on a thrift-store rug,
or the only gold I could ever afford.

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.