Adhesion

The steam has done what time could not,

it found the seam and worked the rot.

A strip of flowers, faded and thin,

curls back like a dry and shedding skin.

Behind the vine and the yellowed rose,

the chalky bone of the drywall shows.

A gray, dead grip of glue and grit

where the past had simply decided to sit.

I stand in the heat of the tiled room,

watching the slow and silent doom

of a pattern I never liked anyway,

finally letting go of the day.