Slow Leak

I shifted the paperbacks three inches to the left

and found where the winter went.

The drywall has a yellowed iris,

a blooming ring of salt and sediment

that maps out a country I never agreed to inhabit.

It feels like chalk under my thumb,

a dry, crumbling history of a roof

that gave up on its only job.

I trace the jagged edge of the bloom,

wondering how many months it took

to turn a solid wall into this brittle, quiet rot.