Previously published in The Cincinnati Review.
I could wallpaper the walls with eviction notices. He is trying to break me. He wants me out. I have filled the sink in case he turns off the water; instead, he turns off the heat. There is a layer of ice as thick as skin in the toilet. I nestle eggs under the floorboards and encourage them to bloom with rot. He looks for loopholes in the lease.
Somehow he’s got my girlfriend’s phone number; he calls at all hours to tell her vicious lies. Someone has let the air out of my landlord’s tires. And somebody has stolen my cat. Somebody has accused someone of some terrible things, and someone has set fire to somebody’s yard.
He dreams of more perfect tenants: quiet families with copper pots and tasteless art. I hide messages behind the switch plates, on the bottom panels of the cabinets, on top of the door frame, anywhere they might survive hasty painting, an attempt to erase me.
He calls the police and tells them he can smell dead bodies. With my BB gun, I take shots at his wife. He stops the trash service. I send obscene messages to his ill and elderly parents.
He dreams of people who brunch, and I stack my books against the door. He dreams of wives in summer dresses, and I eat the last of the tuna. He dreams of the inevitable, as do I.