What the Bathroom Hid

The corner lifts a little more each week.

He said he'd come by. I stopped counting days.

This morning: a fern beneath the beige,

a pattern old enough to know its place —

faded to weak tea, the glue dried hard

and amber at the edge, a kind of seal.

Somebody hung this thirty years before

I dragged my boxes in. You can still feel

the seam if you run your thumb across it.

The fern kept its shape through everything.

I didn't peel it further. Just stood there

in the bathroom, not doing anything.