My Apartment

i.
All the wicked teens downstairs
rattling their bottle caps and
in their darkness sly
and slowly hid
roll on their sweet underbellies
laugh
and sweat through the ceiling.
I play my music for the windows
and the cups in the sink,
flushed and false,
ready to be pulled from the shelf at last and
cracked fastastically open at last and
tender spine snapped and
broken forever and
at last loved.

ii.
The sweet,
disgusting smugness
of the sheets, and the pillow's sighing desire
wetly hold me and with
rotting lust embrace
me
wholly,
loving me as they do,
the God of my empty room.

Cristina Markarian lives in Los Angeles, and cooks pasta with red sauce for dinner every night.

SHELFLIFEMAGAZINE ARCHIVES: issue #002