Poor Hygiene

it could have been the fridge handle, or the front door. maybe the button on the stereo. it didn’t matter which, the dirt had found its way in, and now the body was paying for it in the oldest, most ridiculous way.

the eggs were already there, smaller than anything you could see, waiting in the cracks and on the plastic and under the nails. maybe it was on the Wii, both his hands always on the controller. or maybe it was the way he never washed — after pissing, after eating, after scratching whatever needed scratching. the eggs didn’t care that you once stood at the sink while your mother told you to scrub harder. they only cared that somebody had been careless, and you’d been close enough to catch it.

so there I was on the bicycle, in the snow, the middle of the night, the wind cutting through the coat, riding to the all-night pharmacy for the little bottle that would kill the things living in my arse. threadworms. white and thin and stupidly alive, doing what they were made to do, crawling out in the dark to lay more eggs and make a man of forty feel like a filthy child again.

and he’d asked me, as I pulled my coat on to go, to pick up milk on the way back — both hands on the controller, eyes on the screen, like nothing had changed. like I was popping out for a pint of milk and not pedalling through a blizzard to buy poison for the worms he’d given me.

I came back with the medicine and the milk, stood in the doorway, looked at him, still glued to the screen.

fuck you, Richard, you dirty bastard.

midnight, snow, the bike—
a bottle to kill the worms,
and Richard wants his milk.