bleach in the water –

i would like to stop and smell the roses my namesake take a look around every once in a while  stop but there is much to do, about nothing, about everything as in there is bleach in my water pipes, or there isn’t, or maybe i didn’t run the water hot enough the last time i showered, which was exactly 78 hours ago, because there is bleach in the water and i just took a pair of rusty scissors to the callouses on my feet because my shoes don’t fit right, or because something i said caused the soft parts of my skin to harden and i would love to stop, grab a rose by the stem grown in dirt, and smell but that stem touching the soft parts of my hands… i’d have to wash them seventeen times in a row under hot, near boiling water tainted with bleach nobody else can smell - i have asked, like a madwoman, they say it smells how water is supposed to- and the soft parts of my hands will become stiff and i will attribute it to the cadence in the things i said and the things i didn’t, the parking brake on my car, the knocks on the door, and those little habits i track but cannot explain

i throw salt over my shoulder so my mother doesn’t die, and rush to scrub it off the floor so my father doesn’t either.