by Serena R
the man on the bus is encroaching, breathy, his face scrambled by the
anonymiser, an unnoticeable adjunction with bated breath on the bus screen that
tells me we’re off route but en route to the stop outside my house. the smell of
baby johnson begs the question where is he from. the airconditioning whirrs
expands its
glacial hush and the smell, the smell is the poor smell, of the humid crotch
splayed out and cruising, an abundant thank you, excuse me but how do we ever get to the part where
we’re at home, we’re in love
and there is rotting food waiting in the fridge. tell him to fry up the difference. the indicator collapses its
metronome, two taps until we lurch towards the sort of bed the man leers at in his fitful sleep. i am out of
laundry liquid and i should’ve
bought more before the man’s eyes started rolling towards abandon, his tongue darting
signs behind stairwells where he drops bags of wet food into the
ten weaning mouths of his pets. the kids at school would hold themselves differently around me
knowing they smelt cat piss and soup. it’s hard to get rid of these smells. i can still inhale my
childhood cat’s last breath. they secrete beneath the washes, the babywipes, the floor shearing itself
clean, the floor
i kissed many a times giving way tick tick twice,
to the rural arms of my beloved and
above the headboard, a picture of my first boyfriend,
his face evading me but whose eyes wrathful eyes
would pin me to the passenger seat, the
borrowed plastic the wrong way home.
****
Serena R is a writer based in Sydney whose work examines beauty, control, and the strange emotional economies of modern life. Her writing has appeared in Expat Press. She tweets at @shoesforbr4ins.