The landlord has a bucket of eggshell

The landlord has a bucket of eggshell

and a brush that hides the history.

He painted over the ghost of the radiator,

the gray soot where the winter used to sit.

Now the walls are a flat, clinical lie.

The smell of latex is thick and wet,

strangling the ten years of cheap tobacco

I burned while I watched the clock.

It’s a house now. Just a box with a latch.

The scuff marks are gone,

buried under a layer of sterile white

that doesn't know my name or my debt.