Adhesive

The dresser left a ghost on the wall,

a clean, floral rectangle

where the sun couldn't reach it for twenty years.

The rest of the room has gone a bruised yellow,

the color of a heavy smoker’s teeth.

I lay on the mattress and the springs

complain in the same flat key they did

back when I was twelve.

Up near the ceiling, a scrap of tape

is still holding onto a piece of nothing.

I tried to pick at it with a fingernail,

but it’s turned into a hard, amber scab.

It’s part of the house now,

fused to the paper by the sheer weight

of the air just sitting here.