Nothing Lasts.

I remember limping up to your apartment four years after I’d last seen you. In that time, your mother died in a freeway accident. They found a wet-nosed bunny cradling her skull outside of Yazd. Your apartment building was the color of blended chicken heads before they are fed to the cats. It was a pale pink, so pale that it intersected with gray and I could not bear to think of you, colorful like the opalescent moon, inhabiting a cockroach-infested building, with smells like the rotting sea. The elevator reeked of sweat, its walls sticky and the entire building tasted humid. I felt my many layers of clothing stick to my back and to my chest. It was an oily-dirty feeling that I could only shake off when I saw you, grinning faintly as you opened the door. I missed you so much! How many years had it been again? I paused a moment to remember.