16 Steps
16 steps from the
elevator to the foot of my
apartment door.
I counted them five years ago and
now I can’t unsee it.
Every time I step
out of the elevator.
Everyday
I come home, I look
across the hall.
The grey
brindle carpet shrieks
like the static of a
dead television station.
A dank gruesome
stain runs a quarter
turn to the center of the hallway
and stops.
The stain trails the arching
swing of
my neighbor’s
apartment door. It is
a gruesome stain
as if something drained down
the edge of the door as it
opened and left a dark sludge that
curdled
and dried there.
Almost perfectly arched.
A maddening stain
because
the doors all
swing into the
apartments here.
My apartment door
stares back at me from across the hall.
A menace.
16 steps.
I’ve hazarded smaller and bigger steps,
slight zigzags,
affected limps even.
But I know… I still know!
The hallway
breathes a lunatic eternity and
I exhale
and step
eyes closed
across the carpeting.
The stain is
below
me now
I can feel it
and my
eyes pinch open
but
I jack them
up
across the ceiling
blinking blinking
blinking and land at my
doorstep
at 17.
17 steps.
The key goes into the dead bolt
and the door swings open.
Is this home? Is that what this is?
