Cigarette Smoker's Teeth Yellow

a poem

My mom used to call walls this color,

cigarette smoker’s teeth yellow.

Just sort of dingy.

Too trashy for beige or eggshell.

The shag carpet almost matches,

but it’s off enough to clash visually,

and upset the whole balance.

We bring the furniture in batches,

I try my hand at feng shui.

I could hang up my posters,

interrupt the sense that I’m living in a

nightmare dreamscape,

an endless yellow hallway that evokes the feeling

of an abandoned office building,

or a suburban mall post-2008.

I watch from the window, scenes pass:

a sunset, a moving truck, and my dad

throwing packing peanuts in the dumpster.

I keep my tears inside until they’ve left for the night,

and fall apart on my mattress that doesn’t have sheets yet.

I guess I fall asleep, because I notice how

the broken plastic shades become a colander for the suns rays

in the morning light, my unintended new alarm clock

that burns speckles of late spring

across the blank walls.

It’s a new day in my

second 1st adult apartment.

(this time alone).