Two days of dirty dishes on the counter. Hard oatmeal
and crusty egg yolk. I’m down to my last
two forks. “Quand vient le plombeur?”
Demain, he promises.
I peel off my layers. Sweaty gloves, down jacket,
slush-covered boots that drop gravel
onto my once-clean floors. One fork left.
Demain, he promises.
Dollar store ramen in a chipped blue bowl.
Chopsticks in my right hand, phone in my left. I can’t be
left alone for too long. While the plumber scrapes the last
tenant’s cherry pits out of the drain, I am reading an article about man-made
famine with a clenched jaw.
Cypress Ella is a queer, neurodivergent writer from Hazelton, British Columbia, living in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). She studies creative writing at Concordia University and writes poetry and prose that traces connections between landscape, embodiment, and memory.