Daniel Giovinazzo

Bleach

The room smelt
like bleach. White walls,
white tile floors, white wallpaper -
above hung a white plastered ceiling.
Something is hidden in the cleanliness,
something dark – a cancerous demon,
the demon that possessed your body.
I puked on the floor.
Pieces of your dead skin
drifted to the floor like falling leaves
Like snowflakes.
Like pollen.
Like rejected manuscripts.
I collected your dead skin and
put it in a box - those beautiful dead pieces of you.
What if I lit them on fire to smell your burning flesh?
Would that be weird?
The flesh that possessed me like an angel.
So cliché.
It is as if we are
giant puzzles made of shapes of skin.
So cliché.
IV chords make you a master puppet
being toyed by science.
So cliché.
I felt you that day in the silence.
You were there with me in the white room.
My hand twitched, and then
unlatched the plug from the wall
and separated you from the demon.