In Filth You Will Be Found by Sheila Mulrooney

“I still have the carpet from Ikea with stains from my salt when I’d cross the room, kiss your left ear, and call you Al.”

In Filth You Will Be Found by Sheila Mulrooney

Dirt hides in fingernails. Together, they make brown. I never knew what to do with you on Sundays when the mirrors in our bedroom dusted us with light. Silence isn’t really my thing. Norah Jones tells me it’s okay not to know why, but you didn’t think so, and after two churros and a bloody-mary, I signed my name on that dotted line. Just another invitation I didn’t have to take until I did. It wasn’t so much an expectation, more a wish I had, that would you notice the daily curl-cleaning and the newly sorted-spoons. I still have the carpet from Ikea with stains from my salt when I’d cross the room, kiss your left ear, and call you Al. What could go wrong? We were just trying for Graceland. My piano teacher used to tell me you can’t play with long fingernails because everything has to stand straight, but these days, I like the length and I don’t really play. You couldn’t concentrate with the noise anyway.

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Sheila Mulrooney currently works as a freelance writer and editor. Her fiction and poetry has been published in a variety of online and print journals, including Typishly, Enzo Publishing, and others.

This piece was sponsored by Adam Scharf as a part of our 2019 Nonstop Beginning fundraiser.