Remodel

It started in the bedroom and spread
like a contagion to the rest of the house,
the methodic dismembering of baseboards,
stale linoleum squares excised like scabs.

Among the curls of sandpaper teeth scraped flat
and bent nails scattered like small boomerangs,
we sat along the edge of the floorless bathroom
and dangled our legs into the spidery basement below.

Donna Miscolta is a fiction writer whose stories have appeared in The Americas Review, The Raven Chronicles, and Seattle Magazine.