Roommate | Casey Daly

CASEY DALY

I watched as she pressed orchid petals flatly, As they softened the feathering of the damp, white segment of wall above the sink.

Her nails flattening the dried guts of the flower like textbook illustrations, My esophagus wilting like the dead and yellowed bamboo stems bunched on the counter with a rubber band.

And she lived across the hall but I wondered, What was it about the light spilling through the window that made her bedroom feel so much brighter than mine.

Some days there’d be a dullness on her porcelain face, And I wondered if it had to do with the slouching men and women that emerged from her bedroom, I knew the sheets were soaked in sweat and she was held by forearms under her thighs like a band near the tip of a bouquet, nearly snapped