38
use alternate entrance
by Ellen Webre
This is not the entrance you are looking for.
(It is not actually your apartment.)
This is the entrance you do not care about.
(Even though it looks like your apartment.)
This is an entrance that does not care about you.
(Your apartment would’ve cared a little bit.)
“Do not use this entrance.”
She says, but you are tired and you do not want
to find an another one.
If you open this door you will find a staircase
made of teeth. Crocodile teeth. Because
the landlady of this building has decided
to experiment with “artisanal architecture.”
If you decide to go in, you will find your
grandmother’s taxidermy bicycle
sitting on the mantlepiece, wearing
a straight jacket. Its eyes will blink
at you as you go upstairs.
This is your apartment, you will think,
never mind the undulations of the floor
or the hairs growing out of the walls.
Never mind the heavy breathing on your neck,
or how every window you pass by
fractures into screaming faces
that remind you of third grade when you
were too scared to skin a rabbit all by yourself.
You just want to sleep. There have been
riots in your skin, minced mushrooms and rotten
tomatoes that you have smelled since
the morning he left you with a burnt sneaker
and a handful of salt in the middle of the road.
You walked all day and night to get here.
Damn it all if you use an “alternate entrance.”