The room was painted dark brown

Color of shit

Sorta like his life.

Exactly.

Rough splintered hardwood floors

Sporting patches of ripped glue spots

Artifacts of cheap linoleum

Sprinkled over the floor

As if for decoration

Cigarette butts.

He would go from one o the other when he was out of smoke

Cracking them like white owls

Collecting enough tobacco to roll in an easy rider.

In the Daisy print fruit bowl

He emptied his addiction

Sitting half alive on ratty old holy futon

He waited for dusk,

Street shift punch in,

With no remorse, or disgust

Numb rolling used smoke

Smoking thrift floor tobacco

Repeating nicotine scavenger hunt.

Cigarette burns on chest and bed

Showed places where scenes have been glued together

To play out a day in his life.

The secret changeover that one sees.

The television was his soundtrack

On Shit Brown Walls

Hung three day notice and disposes

In place of Diplomas never acquired

In a small shaft behind his oven

Secretly wrapped in foil

Sat two grams of crack

Waiting for cut.

Tapped under cracked bathroom sink

Hung digital scale, with fresh batteries,

About two feet away from first aid kit,

With its Band-Aids, rubbing alcohol,

Tiny sandwich bags, diagonally cut straw,

And box of rusted razors.

Right above the sink, the first aid and the scale

A thick old burgundy rug covered the mirror

In his procrastination

The sun went down

And product sat unprepared.

He ran around his third floor cave,

Collecting supplies

For Fordham night flee market.

It was then

Reaching for the scale,

He slipped,

Accidentally pulled the towel away from the mirror

And stared flabbergasted

He saw me

Maybe for the first time

It was there he lost taste, desire

Will,

His body lost all life

And I jumped in.

I decided to live.