Fumes That Won’t Forget

The apartment smells like bleach,

a sharp scrape on my nostrils,

sticking to my clothes long after

I’ve left the room.

It’s a warning, the kind that sticks,

the chemical bite stings like a shout,

reminds me of cleaning up chaos

no one else wanted to touch.

That smell crawls under the skin,

etches itself in corners of memory,

as if to say:

this place has been emptied,

but not erased,

not quite yet.