after about a year of not cleaning
wherever you live
a room starts to develop that stale bread texture
that smell or taste
and you live with it
or you seek it out and disinfect it
like some old gangrenous limb that threatens to fall off
you dissassemble the room
you've been habitating
and under a pile of socks,
a couch,
in an old suitcase that's never been closed
there's some papers
that you'd wrote on a year ago
the words look like these ones
the words sound like these ones
the words feel like these ones
and it smells of stale bread
you pick it up, bite into it,
to make sure
and you find that smell in your mouth
that texture.
and you sit with that
for a day or two
because you know you're not done
but you're too tired now
to finish
and now that the smell is out
in the open
exposed and a hundred times stronger
with your memories
you move the little briefcase,
you find a new place for it
where you think you won't smell it again.
and these pages, you've found hanging around this year
you place with in the briefcase too.
forget about it, with a couch, some socks,
and a stick of incense.
it's so much better this way.