On Judging My Friends' Apartments

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Love me a well-trod welcome mat. Love me

a “Bless This Mess” embroidered pillow

on a cat-wrecked couch. Love seeing books

with their spines cracked scattered on your tables,

open and flipped with their pages splayed

like fallen birds. I heard when hermit crabs

outgrow their shells they trade up to homes

discarded by even larger crabs, that they line up

by size and pass them along. Imagine that.

Farewell to a room that can no longer hold you.

Hello to a new set of fat-hugging corners.

I tell my friend her place looks like a museum,

which is to say it is clean, which is to say

that everything feels dead. Let me try your shell

for size. I only love what I anoint in filth.

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Andrew Christoforakis (he/him) is a poet and cubicle-dweller based out of Naperville, IL. He has had work published in The Ekphrastic Review, West Trade Review, B O D Y, and others. His chapbook But What If No One’s Looking Out for Us? was a winner in the Beyond Words Magazine 4th Annual Chapbook Awards.