Behind the milk it waited

Behind the milk, it waited,

that plastic box I'd just forsaken.

Three weeks, maybe four, since I placed it,

now a dark cloud within the glass.

I shut the door, a little quick,

pretended not to see the haze.

What grows in there, a morbid trick?

Some new, unwelcome phase.

It smells, I know, of something wrong,

but still, I can't quite bring myself

to break the seal, where things belong

in sterile order on the shelf.