Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Apartment D.



Apartment D
by james bezerra
Remember that apartment where
the fiberglass was wilting in the shower?
That always seemed dark, but in a kind of sexy cave sort of way?
And always had the wet smell of cigarette smoke,
even in the mornings;
the way everything smells like pine on a hot afternoon in the forest?
The apartment where you came over with plastic grocery sacks
because your mom had taken you shopping and bought us food,
because we didn’t have any
and you pulled out a plastic jug of Early Times,
which we’d neither ever heard of before,
and said, “Mom says
we can mix it with stuff”
and changed my life?
For better or worse.
That apartment where,
when we couldn’t pay PG&E,
the neighbors let us run that orange extension cord
from their balcony across to ours?
And how it hung there slack and low in the middle,
sagging over the dumpsters and the flies.
How we could only plug in one thing at a time?
And how the music stopped if you had to blow dry your hair?
That apartment where,
the cat occasionally caught on fire?
She never did learn she couldn’t stroke
a candle with her tail?

And how we sat up, all of us,
all night, most nights, 
with just the CD player plugged in
and finger tips
strumming guitar strings lit by tea lights and
glowing Marlboro tips
and how the breeze through the open windows blew the smoke out through the kitchen?

Where everyone who came over always brought ice,
just in case the refrigerator was out again,
and because we always seemed to need ice?

Do you remember that apartment?

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