Walk Down

The basement is now a walk-down bistro. I was told about the new use. I dream now of yellow caterpillars on green leaves, and green caterpillars on yellow leaves, of the flake of flock wallpaper peeling in the night the walls rustling with indwellers. There are shadows rats, they molt then by the dim light of dawn are only bones under my mattress. I wonder about that Bistro does it close at 2 or 3 in the morning, does it then rattle unseen with the echoes of an asthmatic angst, does it bloom with the bilious foliage of wheezing lungs? I can imagine its catchpenny lights, its frontage blinking with blue and yellow neon, an electric fizz spitting statically. I am at the table near the restroom ready to run into the mold riddled closet to shiver away hours of candle lit psychosomatic creeps. The patrons seem to be laughing loudly at nothing at all, my parents are screaming louder just to be heard they smash their words through slamming doors. One shouts about never returning but we all did, just at different times when the clocks were changed to heartbeats. I look out of the window, there is no window - was no window not to look out of not to see clearly through when the dank dark crawled forward on its hundred and one legs.