The Ivy Grows

I stood beside the smallest increment. Judging, constantly misjudging it. It crackled. His hungry cellophane skin. As I made wrinkles everywhere.

We slept in the stove, but always woke up in the freezer.

Sometimes though, there's no preserving.

He said I was different. Tell me something I don't already know. He said I fancied myself a mystery, but that he'd long since figured out who the murderer was.

And it wasn't the butler.

Who then, I pressed, with beer as my backbone.

He just grunted and huffed I should know by now that it mattered to him.

So I asked, which way are you turning the screw?

And when he didn't understand the question I knew the answer.