Warped

Warped 6/15

You can hear the downstairs neighbors fighting
through the floorboards and if you get down real
close to the nails you can see them pacing with
raised arms and pointing fingers

She has red nails

He is wearing those waterproof gardening shoes

The light is coming from another part of the room
it makes shadows that look like noir films and
haunted amusement parks there is a yellow strike
across the center of the floor where a doorway
floods the space because light is not unlike water
these old apartments are definitely not ship-shape

Old wood floors smell like time like feet and worn
things like the ocean and that old shirt that you
can see through they smell like dryer sheets after
they’ve been used

The grooves are epic

Nail heads are little black eyes

They have left the room below and the yelling
becomes muffled and a door slams and a TV
turns itself on and suddenly there is Spanish
a telenovela they were yelling in English but
maybe they weren’t

The cracks in old wood definitely turn things