I miss the smell of clean clothes.

All I smell these days
is burnt rubber,
how tragic and frayed
life is,

how it’s worn down
my senses,
like mold
doused in perfume.

In dreams I shake my mother
until her brain resets
into someone who never
swallows screams
of my father,
into someone
who stops
coating every room in Lysol.

Heaven forbid she admit to
smelling
my father's breath,
but lord knows she’ll pretend
his special water
won’t erupt the sink
from years
snaking the drain.

I’m the age of a mother,
but I need
to be mothered
like a child.